Eulalie Spence (June 11, 1894[1] – March 7, 1981) was a writer, teacher, director, actress and playwright from the British West Indies.

[2] Spence was also a mentor to theatrical producer Joseph Papp, founder of The Public Theater and the accompanying festival currently known as Shakespeare in the Park.

[1][7] Her niece Patricia Hart, described Spence as "prim, proper and ultracorrect in speech and dress, yes – but she was gentle, generous and loving and the backbone of a family of seven girls.

"[2][6] Because of her father's difficulty in finding steady employment, Spence and her family lived in meager circumstances, crowded in a small apartment in Brooklyn.

Poverty forced their mother to make clothes from discarded uniform fabric at the school where she worked, and there was a great sense of loss when their father "gave up his dream of returning to their homeland.

Spence cast Queenie Smith, a popular Broadway actress in the 1920s, in the lead role for the play, which was scheduled to open at the Empress Theatre in Danbury, Connecticut in 1933.

[9][30] Although her play never reached the stage, it remains significant because it represents one of the earliest attempts to enter commercial theater by an African-American writer.

Although Spence said that this contrast was likely from her experiences at home with a quiet, soft-spoken father who left all the decisions to his wife, the differences between her male and female characters was unintentional.

[2] In a 1924 review, writer George S. Schuyler criticized Spence's play On Being Forty for its inability to connect with the audience and for having characters that were "not true to Negro life.

[8] The hint of racial overtones is also present in the script, as the man's dark-skinned wife is obsessed with light skin of his former lover, and she eventually destroys their attempt to reunite.

She frequently addressed issues such as racism, infidelity, and the roles of women, using comedy as a medium because she felt it provided other ways, such as satire, to bring awareness to the African-American experience.

"[3] This response is an example of how important she felt the use of dialect was to accurately portray the characters she wrote about, many of whom were poor and lived in urban environments that included prostitution and gambling.

According to Adrienne Macki Braconi, "Spence's work serves as a paradigm to examine the presence of dialect on the stage in black drama, taking into account how linguistic patterns confirm ethnicity on-stage and what that suggests in performance.

Du Bois' refusal to give Spence a share of the award money won by her play at the National Little Theatre Tournament eventually led to the end of the Krigwa Players.

[9] Spence, who never married,[36] retreated from public life after The Whipping and focused on her work as a high school teacher,[37] while she continued to write and act for Columbia University's Laboratory Players.

He continued to speak about her in reverential terms even fifty years after he was a student in her classroom, at Eastern District High School, where she was the only black teacher.

[36] Papp credited Spence with "scrubbing his tongue" of its Brooklyn accent[7] and eliminating his "gutter speech" by teaching him grammar and proper enunciation.

[36] Contemporary scholars have tended to dismiss Spence's plays because of their inclusion of Black dialect and because of her inability to sustain a career in theatre.

"[6] Hatch and Shine also called Spence one of the best craftswomen of the Harlem Renaissance, and probably the only playwright of the period to formally attend classes in dramatic structure.

"[7] Spence has been overshadowed by the counterparts of her day such as Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, and James Weldon Johnson, although in recent years scholars have reconsidered her work along with other lesser known African-American female writers such as May Miller and Pauline Elizabeth Hopkins.

Included along with Spence's work were plays by Sophie Treadwell, Gertrude Stein, Dorothy Parker, Susan Glaspell and Rita Wellman.

[41][42] Her play The Starter premiered in Xoregos Performing Company's program Songs of the Harlem River in New York City's Dream Up Festival, August 30-September 6, 2015.

"She's Got Harlem On Her Mind," a trio of three plays, "Hot Stuff," "The Starter," and "The Hunch," opened in February, 2023 at the Metropolitan Playhouse in New York City.