One Drop: Dead or Alive

The Ensemble Theatre continues its 40th Anniversary season celebration with a salute to Texas playwrights through a serious of monthly stage readings. The Ensemble Theatre presents another installment of the Texas Playwrights Staged Reading Series. Next up is One Drop: Dead or Alive (A series of ten minute plays) by J.E. Franklin (pictured). Directed by Shirley Marks Whitmore. Franklin brings forth a series of stories based on real people who knowingly or unknowingly passed for white. Associated with the principle of the “Invisible Negro,” the “Invisible Jew” and the “Invisible Indian,” Blood-Fraction laws—commonly known as One-Drop laws—were instituted in America as early as colonial times. Aimed at purging white communities, the laws were devised to track down, reclassify and/or expel individuals living as white and who were discovered to have any ancestors whose bloodline dipped below the Sahara Desert.