Plays
Special Event: The Will At
Idlewild: Classical Connections to African American Culture
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About The Will at Idlewild
The Bridge Party
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The Will
A Bed Made In Heaven
Explores the
relationship between Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings. Set in 1801
during Jefferson's first presidency, the play is a imaginative
recreation of a complex, vital Sally Hemings who refuses to be
identified merely as a mistress and a conflicted Jefferson forced to
decide how to deal with a scandal threatening his presidency. All
scenes take place at Monticello. The play dramatizes the reactions
of the Monticello household---Jefferson himself, his married daughter
Patsy Jefferson Randolph, Sally Hemings, and her mother Betty
Hemings---to the scandal caused by James Callender's public revelation
of a sexual relationship between Jefferson and Sally Hemings. This
story raises fundamental questions about American politics and private
life, a story two centuries old whose fascination seems only to grow in
the twenty-first century.
King
A spoken word piece
about the journey of Martin Luther King Jr. as he struggled to bring
civil rights to the United States. The piece, a mixture of poetry and
brief reflections, remembers Rev. King as an individual with human
limitations who answered the call to leadership in service to humanity.
His life serves as a model for those, especially the young, who might
feel that any imperfection disqualifies them from leadership.
King was first performed
in January 2005 at the Wharton Center in East Lansing, Michigan with
choral accompaniment by the Detroit Renaissance High School Choir, Ann Arbor Youth
Chorale and Michigan State University Children's Choirs.
Sally
Sally is a one-woman drama set at Monticello in the days before
Thomas Jefferson's death on July 4, 1826. The play explores the thoughts
and feelings of a mature Sally Hemings as she reflects on her life with
Thomas Jefferson. In Jefferson's final days, Sally Hemings is
determined to insure that his long-ago promise to free all their
children at the age of 21 will be kept after his death.
Sally was first performed
in February 2003 at the New York State Writers Institute. Zabryna
Guevara appeared in the role of Sally Hemings under the direction of
Langdon Brown.
Room and Board
A
one-act play about a group of young African American women at a sorority
house on a Midwestern campus in the sixties. Etta, the main
character, unwilling to follow the rules of the sorority, decides to
leave the house but faces racial prejudice in the outside world.
Room and Board was first
performed in May 2002 at the 31st annual conference of
the Society for the Study of Midwestern Literature held in East Lansing,
Michigan. Cast: Ken Nelson, Brandi Walker, and Lamont Clegg.
"Do You Like Philip Roth?"
A
one-act play about African-American college students at a Midwestern
university during the civil-rights movement of the 1960s. Walter and
Etta meet at Walter’s apartment. Walter, intellectual, hip, newly
returned from the summer voting rights campaign in Mississippi, is
struggling to readjust to life on campus. Etta, an independent free
spirit, tries to gain Walter’s trust.
Do you like Philip
Roth? was first performed on May 12, 2001 at the 31st annual conference of
the Society for the Study of Midwestern Literature held in East Lansing,
Michigan. Cast: Ken Nelson, Brandi Walker, and Lamont Clegg.
Portrays the strength of a
group of black women who gather for their weekly bridge game as they
cope with a house-to-house search of the black community in the wake of
a lynching.
The setting of The Bridge
Party is the meeting of an African American women's bridge club in
the South of the 1940's. A group of women have gathered for their
weekly bridge party hosted by the daughters of Emma Edwards, Theodora,
Leona and Marietta. The play dramatizes the ways in which these women
deal with the racism of their era while still maintaining their dignity
and sense of self. At the same time, the women are faced with their own
personal dilemmas. We learn that Cordie Cheek, a young black man, has
been acquitted of the charge of molesting a white woman. Leona, pregnant
and separated from her husband, must confront her mother-in-law Mary
Jane Barnes. At the beginning of the second act, Marietta reports that
Cordie Cheek has been tortured and lynched on a bridge outside town. The
women, still struggling with family issues, are confronted by
newly-deputized white officers going house-to-house through the black
area looking for guns to confiscate. Using “mother wit,” Emma Edwards
thwarts the renewed attempt of the deputies to seize the guns in the
house. The play ends with Marietta's speculations about the possibility
of race war and the ultimate achievement of justice.
"Because racism was
then legally entrenched and publicly justified, it was a significant
accomplishment to build a life with ceremonies and rituals affirming the
integrity and importance of our friendships and families, of our own lives."
Sandra Seaton,
from How I Came To Write The Bridge Party
(click to read)
Seaton based the play on
family stories describing the way of life of middle-class blacks in the
South before the modern civil rights movement. This play is not a
"docudrama" of her family's life but rather a presentation of
a part of the African American experience that is often overlooked.
Photos of the original Bridge Party.
The files are large and
may take a few seconds to open.
View photo 1.
(jpeg) Thursday
Afternoon Bridgettes, African American bridge club, Formal Dance,
Columbia, Tennessee, circa 1941.
View
photo 2. (jpeg) The Bridgettes, African American bridge
club, Formal Dance, Columbia, Tennessee, circa 1942.
Back Row: (Left to
Right)
Thomas Jones, Frank
Leroy Hawthorne, M.D., Benjamin Franklin Davis,
M.D., Vernon K. Ryan, Cyrus Jerome Browne, Edward H. Kimes,
Tommie Mitchell, Frederick Randolph Howell, Horace Oliver Porter,
Middle Row: (Left to
Right)
Olivia Nicholson, Hattye
Mary Evans, Eddie M. Blackwell, Annie Lee Bugg, Alene Mitchell
Front Row: (Left to
Right)
Ruth Delores Whitaker,
Pett Mae Davis, Pinkie Flippin Ryan, Mozella Brooks Browne, Samuella
Trotter Kimes, Camille Evans Howell, Mildred Sinsing Porter
To learn more about the Bridge Party please
view the following sites and articles:
Indiana
University Press
Strange Fruit
Michigan
State University
Media Communications
News Releases
"Bridge
Party" Opens on Arena Stage Today
(pdf)
Article by Gloriane Peck of The State News.
From the January 27, 2000 issue.
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Dramatizes the life of an
African American family in a small town in Tennessee during the
Reconstruction.
The play
is set in Tennessee at the home of Cyrus and Eliza Webster during
Reconstruction. Cyrus, whose will is the source of the title, acquired
considerable property as a free black before the end of the Civil War.
Cyrus is determined to pass on not only his worldly possessions but also
his spiritual convictions and his wisdom to his descendants. A man of
peace who has survived both war and racism, Cyrus will do whatever is
necessary to see that his family endures and their inheritance is passed
on to future generations. Despite the setbacks of Reconstruction efforts
to achieve true equality, he has faith that eventually equality will be
achieved. Cyrus’s son Israel, just back from the Civil War, does not
share his father’s faith. His demand to be treated with the respect due
a returning soldier puts his own life at risk and endangers all that
Cyrus has achieved. When the newly-constituted Ku Klux Klan comes to the
house looking for Israel, Eliza, Cyrus’s wife, refuses to disclose his
whereabouts and successfully hides Israel. The rebellion of Israel
against racial injustice forces Cyrus to act to protect his inheritance
in all its dimensions.
Sandra Seaton,
from Reading The Will
(click to read)
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