Bee-Luther-Hatchee

Shelita Burns (Donna Biscoe), who edits a line of reprinted “lost” African-American classics, is the protagonist. Shelita has found a surprise best seller with the memoir Bee-Luther-hatchee (an expression referring to the place you go “after hell”), and we get glimpses of the work in speeches by author Libby Prince (Mitchell Leon) describing her life in the Jim Crow South. 

But Despite being a successful, award-winning author, Libby remains an enigma, never photographed or interviewed, and even Shelita has never met her in person. Shelita dedicates herself to tracking Libby down, and after several blind alleys discovers in a Charlotte hotel room that the author is not at all whom she expected. The playwright provides a juicy mystery in the first act that sets up a provocative debate in the second, wrestling with such matters as authenticity, entitlement, fraud and “why is the writer more important that the words?”