The Death of Bessie Smith is a one-act play by American playwright Edward Albee, written in 1959 and premiered in West Berlin the following year. The play consists of a series of conversations between Bernie and his friend Jack, Jack and an off-stage Bessie, and black and white staff of a whites-only hospital in Memphis, Tennessee on the death date of the famous blues singer, Bessie Smith, who died in a car wreck. Source: Wikipedia (en)