Author of over 40 plays that delight in the wisdom and witlessness of the human condition.
Welcome to the Official Site of
Award-Winning Playwright
CELESTE BEDFORD WALKER
Sassy Mamas and Other Plays
By Celeste Bedford Walker
Foreword by EILEEN J. MORRIS
Introduction by Sandra M. Mayo
Celeste Bedford Walker, one of the most accomplished contemporary playwrights in Texas, crafts dramas from history and everyday life that illuminate the African American experience in all its variety, tragedy, pathos, and hilarity. The topics treated by Walker are timelier than ever. Collected here are five of her most acclaimed plays: Sassy Mamas, Greenwood: An American Dream Destroyed, Reunion in Bartersville, Distant Voices, and Camp Logan. Wittliff Collections Literary Series.
Media:
Request a review copy
Professors:
Exam copy availability
A STAR WITHOUT A STAR
The untold story of Juanita Moore
Written by
CELESTE BEDFORD WALKER, KIRK E. KELLEYKAHN and J.W. NUTTING
Directed by
KIRK E. KELLEYKAHN
Wins Best Documentary Feature at the 18th Montreal International Black Film Festival (MIBFF)!
TRAILER:
Read Black Masks' recent interview with Celeste.
Also, coming in 2023
from Texas A&M University Press:
"Sassy Mamas and Other Plays by Celeste Bedford Walker"
2022
Lon Tinkle Award
for Lifetime Achievement
Winner:
Celeste Bedford Walker!
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2019 AUDELCO AWARD
Best Revival of a Play
Reunion in Bartersville
(Hilarious Murder Mystery)
performed by Black Spectrum Theatre Co.
TIL Lifetime Achievement Award
“Author Celeste Bedford Walker has been named the winner of the Texas Institute of Letters’ prestigious Lon Tinkle Award for Lifetime Achievement. This is the highest honor given by the TIL, which was established in 1936 to recognize distinctive literary achievement.
“Celeste Bedford Walker has been at the forefront of literary Texas for years, and her expertly crafted plays combine surprising drama, sharp and incisive dialogue, and the revelation of opening a new world for fans of the theatre.” — TIL President Sergio Troncoso
Celeste Walker
Accepting Lifetime Achievement Award
Texas Institute of Letters
April 23, 2022
El Paso, Texas
PREVIOUS PRODUCTIONS & EVENTS
REVIEWS & PRESS
"Great actors, great story-line, and great execution."
- Vickie Evans, Broadway World
(Reunion in Bartersville)
"The quintessential National Black Theatre Festival (NBTF) experience was Celeste Bedford Walker’s “Reunion in Bartersville.”
A jam-packed house was whooping with laughter, me included."
- Christopher Rawson,
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
(Reunion in Bartersville)
 Sassy MamasIt's steamy. It's sexy. It's Sassy Mamas!" — BBMedia TV |  Camp LoganAlthough “Camp Logan” is written by a woman, I have never seen a truer evocation of the trials and tribulations that mark the struggle to live as a dignified black man in America." — Playthell Benjamin, N.Y. Daily |  Sassy Mamas"Lovable...broad appeal." — Houston Chronicle |  Sassy Mamas"Delivers passion and glee . . . a cross between 'Sex & The City' and 'How Stella Got Her Groove Back!' " — Broadway World |  Camp Logan"Captivating, riveting, joyful, comical, and devastatingly real!" — Kaylene Peoples, Agenda Magazine |
|---|---|---|---|---|
 Black Wall Street"She skillfully chronicles the final days and hours of these Greenwood citizens, weaving narratives on familial relationships, financial freedom, civic loyalty, blossoming romance, and the looming jealousy and unleashed terrorism by White Tulsa citizens. — Lynette Braxton, Downstage Pass |  Sassy Mamas"Brings audiences to their feet and rolling in the aisles!" — Houstonia |  Sassy Mamas InterviewInterview with Celeste Walker CLICK FOR FULL INTERVIEW |  Sassy Mamas WINS!!Best PLAY and Best DIRECTOR! — BroadwayWorld Regional Awards |  Once in a Wifetime“Once in a Wife Time” is unquestionably good theater. The audience found the show hilarious." — Michael Frym, Variety Magazine |
BOOK a STAGE PLAY
Send an email to celestebwalker@aol.com to book one of the plays below. Please include the name of the play you want to book in the subject line of your email.
GREENWOOD: An American Dream Destroyed
Greenwood: An American Dream Destroyed tells the powerful story of the tragedy that took place on May 31, 1921 in the Greenwood District of Tulsa, OK from the perspective of three generations of the Boley family, a representative composite of an African-American family that may have lived during that tragic and tumultuous time.
Email Celeste at celestebwalker@AOL.com to book GREENWOOD, or click the button below.
Sassy Mamas
Three sophisticated and successful women find themselves living single and ready to mingle…but this time with much (much) younger men.
This fun, feisty romantic comedy explores the dynamics between the sexes, and highlights when a woman knows what she wants…she knows how to get it.
Email Celeste at celestebwalker@AOL.com to book SASSY MAMAS, or click the button below.
Popular Plays by Celeste
Continue scrolling to see more plays available for booking.
Camp Logan
An entertaining and compelling story of six black U.S. soldiers and the incidents leading up to the tragic 1917 racially-charged riot at their Camp Logan base in Houston Texas during World War l.
Walker’s nuanced, suspenseful dramatization details the buildup to the riot that left dozens dead, including 17 African American soldiers hanged for mutiny.
Sassy Mamas
Three sophisticated and successful women find themselves living single and ready to mingle…but this time with much (much) younger men.
This fun, feisty romantic comedy explores the dynamics between the sexes, and highlights when a woman knows what she wants…she knows how to get it.
Reunion in Bartersville
Bartersville High is having its 50th reunion at Janie Mae’s house. All of the guests have arrived, ready for an evening of gaiety.
But…they’re in for a heart-stopping surprise when an unexpected guest arrives and turns their party into an evening of hilarious suspense.
A thrilling comedy mystery.
Repertoire of Work
Stage Plays
Black Spurs
Greenwood, An American Dream Destroyed
Shared Secrets (Adaptation)
The Eddie Thomas Story
Memoirs of a Would Be Black Militant
I, Barbara Jordon
Sassy Mamas
Sassafras Girls
Harlem After Hours
The Red Blood of War
Piccolo Sergeant
Distant Voices
Praise the Lord, and Raise the Roof
Noble Lofton, Buffalo Soldier
Brothers, Sisters, Husbands and Wives
Over Forty
Camp Logan
Reunion in Bartersville
Adam and Eve, Revisited
The Wreckin’ Ball
Once in a Wife Time
Screen Plays
Barbara Jordan Documentary (Writer, Project Mgr.)
Juanita Moore Documentary (Writer)
The Butterfly Girls (Writer, interactive web game)
Sam Cooke Story (Story Editor)
Reunion in Bartersville Pilot (Treatment)
Men of Bronze (Dialogue Polish)
Camp Logan(Screenplay)
The Boule (Writer, Video)
Medipaid Girls (Writer, Feature film)
Community Kitchen (Writer, Video)
Publications /Articles
Texas Playwrights Anthology (University TX Press)
Texas Women Writers (TX A&M Press)
Black Texas Women: 150 Years of Trials & Triumphs
New York Times Theater Review
Theater Yearbook: The Complete Broadway and Off-Broadway Sourcebook
Theater World
Women in Theatre (Wrote article)
About Celeste
Celeste Bedford Walker’s award-winning canon includes over forty plays, videos, documentaries and films that have been performed and viewed in major venues across the country. She has received numerous commissions to write dramas, comedies, and musicals for theaters, schools, museums, and organizations.
Recognized by the U.S. Congress for her historical contribution as producer and author of works that bring to light lost stories of African American history, Walker has received several honors and awards in theatre.
Awards include finalist in the international Susan Smith Blackburn Prize for outstanding work by a female playwright; The Beverly Hills/Hollywood NAACP Theatre Awards for Best Playwright/Best Play for positive portrayal of Blacks in the media; the National Black Theatre's August Wilson Playwriting Award for significant contributions to Black and American Theatre; finalist in 38th Annual Samuel French OOB Short Play Festival, Houston Ensemble Theatre's Salute to Texas Playwrights, New York's AUDELCO nominations and awards, Memphis Tennessee's Gyneka Award, and others.
Celeste was recently commissioned to write a play as part of the BOLD Theater Women's Leadership Circle grant, under leadership of Ensemble Theatre's artistic director Eileen Morris. Her historical drama "The Red Blood of War," was selected to participate in the 39th Annual Wm. Inge Theatre Festival New Play Lab in Independence Kansas. Due to COVID-19 it was postponed to spring 2021.
Walker's work is also featured in the anthology "Acting Up and Getting Down," published by the University of Texas Press.
A proud member of the Dramatists Guild of America, Ms. Walker is also a council member of the Texas Institute of Letters, a distinguished honor society founded in 1936 to celebrate Texas literature and recognize distinctive literary achievement.
Celeste is also a member of Honor Roll! an advocacy and action group of women+ playwrights over forty - and their allies - whose goal is their inclusion in theater.
Her plays, universal in theme, come out of the Black experience, embracing the sacred and the mundane, the serious and the comic, with an awesome delight in the wisdom and the witlessness of the human condition.
Mountaintop Productions
Celeste’s production company, Mountaintop Productions, has produced and co-produced several of her plays, including “Camp Logan,” (The Kennedy Center, Wash. D.C.), “The Red Blood of War,” (The Samuel French OOB Festival, NY), “Praise the Lord and Raise the Roof,” (The 1996 Olympic Arts Festival, Atlanta, GA), “Brothers, Sisters, Husbands and Wives,” (Houston Music Hall), “Once in a Wife Time” (Tower Theater, Houston, TX), and “Reunion in Bartersville,” (Layfayette, LA).
Mountaintop Productions
Celeste Walker, Founder/CEO
Sage Edwards, Managing Producer
