Originally from New York often found in Los Angeles, chandra thomas is an award-winning multihyphenate storyteller. As a playwright, her work has been presented at Primary Stages, McCarter Theatre, Barrow Group, Naked Angels, Echo Theater, Road Theater, Athena Arts Theater, Downtown Urban Theatre Festival, Vivid Stage, Passage Theatre, among others. chandra’s full-length plays, rom-com-drama THE BUZZER and multigenerational-family circus play ...OF CHAMPIONS, were named Finalists in the Blue Ink Playwriting Award. She was also a nominee for the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize.
chandra’s also a writer of television, film and narratives (Emmy Award-winning comedy MOM) as well as a performer (New York Theatre Workshop, LAW & ORDER: SVU). She earned BA degrees in Theatre and Sociology from Vanderbilt University, and holds an MFA in Acting from Columbia University. In the tradition of her proud immigrant family, chandra’s storytelling centers characters who are pushed to the margins while blending humor with emotional heart and social bite.
ABOUT THE MONOLOGUE
It was happenstance, how Wilma Rudolph came into my world. (That said, i’ve had more ‘happenstances’ than i should be comfortable admitting. Perhaps speaking to a grander hand at work, but i digress. ) i was thumbing through a shelf at a bookstore selling previously owned books in New York when the autobiography WILMA literally fell in my hands. The book wasn’t in the greatest condition but i was so taken by the photo of a sprinting Ms. Rudolph on the cover and the description of a woman who defied seemingly insurmountable odds. So the book was a key purchase. That was many years ago. In that time, i’ve explored theatrical ways to contribute to the storytelling canon about this incredible woman, athlete, changemaker, as well as the people who helped her achieve greatness. Having an opportunity to do so with this monologue is an honor.
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EXCERPT FROM NO (SOME) WAYS TIRED
~ Excerpt published by permission, all rights held by the playwright.
WILMA
Blanche found out I could get treated at Meharry Hospital, the Black medical college in Nashville—50 miles away. She took me there, twice a week, for two years. And this girl the world had written off but whose mother would never, walked —granted with metal braces, but I was walking. It took some more years before I could walk without crutches, braces and those kind of things. And, at age twelve, I set my eyes on becoming an athlete.
(takes her medal off)
Blanche, and so many women like her, deserve these medals just as much as me. If for nothing else, for how we just keep going. No matter what, we keep going. Even when we feel very tired. But mark my words, there’s gonna be a time when we only gonna feel some ways tired. And when that happens, the world is really in for an awakening.