Based upon the personal experience of playwright Alice Childress, this play tells the story of an African American actress who struggles to maintain her dignity as an artist while rehearsing a new, Broadway-bound play. Trouble in Mind was a smash hit Off-Broadway in 1955. Producers optioned the play for Broadway, but playwright Alice Childress refused to brighten the ending for a commercial audience, so the move was canceled. Today Childress is best known for the 1973 novel A Hero Ain’t Nothin’ but a Sandwich, which she adapted for a 1978 film that starred Cicely Tyson and Paul Winfield.