Brutal Imagination: a reading of Cornelius Eady’s play by Joe Morton and Sally Murphy

Based on Cornelius Eady’s poem cycle, Brutal Imagination is a powerful examination of the notorious 1994 incident in which a white woman in South Carolina, Susan Smith, claimed that a Black man had kidnapped her children. The FBI searched for the man until Smith confessed that she had invented the Black man and had drowned her children. Brutal Imagination, two voices inside one consciousness, brings this invented man to life. Written by Oppenheimer Award-winning playwright and poet Cornelius Eady, directed by and starring Emmy-Award-winner actor Joe Morton and staring Steppenwolf Theatre ensemble cast member Sally Murphy. This reading is a collaboration of the Yale Public Humanities Program, the Department of Theater and Performance Studies, and the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, hosted in conjunction with the undergraduate class Approaches to Contemporary Biography at Beinecke Library.