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Bottle Tree Theatre’s The Recipe Book: A Reading Series presents A Movie Star Has to Star in Black and White
Bottle Tree Theatre presents
The Recipe Book: A Reading Series
The October Recipe:
A Movie Star Has to Star in Black and White
Written by Adrienne Kennedy
Directed by Jaquita Ta’le
Click here for tickets!
Step into the dazzling yet disorienting world of Hollywood through the eyes of one of America’s most celebrated playwrights, Adrienne Kennedy.
In The October Recipe: A Movie Star Has to Star in Black and White, Kennedy blurs the boundaries between fantasy and reality, cinema and self, as a young Black woman envisions her life unfolding like scenes from classic Hollywood films.
This staged reading invites you to experience Kennedy’s poetic language and haunting imagery up close — an exploration of identity, ambition, and the performance of womanhood in a world obsessed with the silver screen.
Join an evening of luminous storytelling and powerful performances as Bottle Tree Theatre brings Kennedy’s masterful script to life for one night only!
The Recipe Book
A monthly reading series spotlighting new works by emerging Black playwrights while honoring lesser-known Black writers whose stories helped shape the field.
Why the Recipe Book?
The Recipe Book takes its name from the act of passing down knowledge—much like your grandma’s sweet potato pie recipe. If not shared, it risks being lost forever.
This series honors that tradition. Each play is a recipe: rich, cultural, storied. We have the honor of passing down the work already gifted to us by prolific but lesser-known Black playwrights such as Shirley Graham Du Bois, Alice Childress, Samm-Art Williams, J.e. Franklin, and Pearl Cleage, while also making room for the living history we’re creating with emerging Black playwrights.
The Recipe Book reminds us that art is not only communal, but also a call to action, a tool of hope, and a blueprint for the future—one that has often already been drafted for us by artists who came before or who are yet to be discovered. The weapons are already in the house. We just need to keep them active—and pass them down.