The Mammy Project

Performance Space 122 presents Michelle Matlock’s The Mammy Project, directed by Amy Gordon. In this solo show, Matlock digs up the dirt on the century-old icon of Aunt Jemima. The bandanna’ed superstar of minstrel shows, Hollywood epics, and the breakfast nook is re-imagined from her dark history in the antebellum south, freed from the humiliating role for talented black actresses, and set loose from her pancake box prison on an unsuspecting audience.

The Mammy Project confronts the American stereotype of Mammy as a white man’s fantasy, a black woman’s history and a country’s favorite product. As performed by Michelle Matlock this project travels from the life and times of Nancy Green (the first woman hired to play the part of a mammy – Aunt Jemima), through the minstrel show era and silver-screen Mammies, to the present day world of television, movies and world-recognized talk show hostesses.