"GALIVANTIN' HUSBAND" WAS AN EQUITY PRODUCTION!

"GALIVANTIN' HUSBAND
A REAL-LIFE STORY!"



GALIVANTIN' HUSBAND, a domestic thriller by Milburn Davis, will perhaps best be remembered for presenting a character that typified married women who were fed up with their stereotypical domestic roles at a time when women everywhere were discarding their bras and stepping into shoes that had traditionally been reserved for men. The year was 1972, a chameleon-like, prickly year, when the country was going through the throes of many painful and controversial experiences that impacted negatively on African-Americans. Black men wanting to reach the top could at best secure mostly token positions, airplanes were still being hijacked by those seeking contentment on the distant shores of Lebanon and Cuba, and the Black Community was plagued with heroin addiction, unemployment and other indices of poverty.

"GALIVANTIN' HUSBAND actually was a take-off on a short story that I had originally published in Jive Magazine when I was in the Air Force," said Milburn Davis. "I used a few ingredients from my first marriage for the sauce, incorporating some of the problems that me and my wife were experiencing at the time." Steve Carter, director of the Negro Ensemble Company's Repertory Workshop was delighted with the script of GALIVANTIN' HUSBAND, a domestic thriller that ended with a knifing death and produced it during the repertory event inside the Studio, a smaller theater facility at the St. Marks Theatre. "He really wanted to use two of my plays, but I refused to make a crucial change in THE $100,000 NIGGER, a comedy, causing him to reject it." GALIVANTIN' HUSBAND thrilled audiences for three weekends. The play was directed by Arthur French, with Aston Young as stage manger. It starred Joyce Walker, Jack Landrum, Taurean Blacque and Sylvia Suarez. After the closing of the play, it received a tandem production at Clay Tyson's Player's Worshop in the Village. In the cast were Liz Van Dyke, Roland Sanchez, and the playwright himself, in the role of the bartender.