the process series

through extensive interviews and are chronicled in Johnson’s forthcoming book, Honeypot: Black Southern Women Who Love Women to be published by UNC Press. Adapted and directed by Johnson, Gathering Honey features professional and local actresses performing the stories of love, loss, trauma, and joy as told by Southern black women ages 18 to 75.

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Presented with support from the Center for Interdisciplinary Research in the Arts, Northwestern University; the UNC Center for the Study of the American South; the Southern Oral History Program; and the UNC Department of Communication Studies.

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* Appears courtesy of Actors’ Equity Association

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About the Playwright:

E. Patrick Johnson is Carlos Montezuma Professor of Performance Studies and African American Studies at Northwestern University. A scholar/artist, Johnson has performed nationally and internationally and has published widely in the area of race, gender, sexuality and performance. He recently performed Sweet Tea: Black Gay Men of the South in Durham, NC. His one-man show, Strange Fruit—A Performance About Identity Politics, toured around the country from 1999–2004 to critical acclaim and he has toured his staged reading, Pouring Tea: Black Gay Men of the South Tell Their Tales, to over 100 college campuses around the country. He is the author of two award-winning books, Appropriating Blackness: Performance and the Politics of Authenticity (Duke UP, 2003), and Sweet Tea: Black Gay Men of the South—An Oral History (University of North Carolina UP, 2008). Johnson also recorded the audio version of Sweet Tea in 2012. He is currently at work on the companion text to Sweet Tea, tentatively titled Honeypot: Black Lesbians of the South—An Oral History. In 2010, Johnson was awarded the Black Theater Alliance Award for Best Solo Performance for his performance in Sweet Tea and was inducted into the Chicago LGBT Hall of Fame.