COLLOQUY COLLECTIVE
STRANGE FRUIT

Sundays: Feb. 8 | March 8 | April 19 | May 17 | June 7, 2015
SUNDAY READINGS OF ANTI-LYNCHING PLAYS FROM THE EARLY 1900S

In the early 1900s, many African-American playwrights and some white sympathizers wrote anti-lynching plays in an attempt to educate Americans to the everyday fears of young black men in the South and to drive this country towards racial justice. Given the renewed, legalized violence on black and brown bodies, JACK, in collaboration with the theater company Colloquy Collective, will present readings of five of these one-act anti-lynching plays throughout the spring, directed by Courtney Harge with professional actors.

DATES AND PLAYS:
Sunday, Feb. 8: Aftermath (1919), by Mary P. Burrill
Sunday, March 8: The Forfeit (1925), by Corrie Crandall Howell
Sunday, April 19 (changed from April 12): Blue-Eyed Black Boy (1930), by Georgia Douglas Johnson
Sunday, May 17: Safe (1929), by Georgia Douglas Johnson, followed by a discussion with Prof. Koritha Mitchell (Ohio State University), an expert on anti-lynching plays and author of the book Living with Lynching: African American Lynching Plays, Performance, and Citizenship, 1890 - 1930 (University of Illinois Press, 2011)
Sunday, June 7: readings of all previous plays (each about 15 minutes), as well as an excerpt of Rachel (1914), by Angelina Weld Grimké

TIME: 7 PM, followed by discussion

MORE INFO

Sunday, Feb. 8: Aftermath (1919), by Mary P. Burrill (1884-1946), tells the story of a young black soldier in World War I who comes back to rural South Carolina and learns that his father has been lynched by a white mob. He grabs his service revolver and leaves home to settle the score.

Sunday, March 8: Corrie Crandall Howell's The Forfeit (1925) depicts a white woman who facilitates the lynching of a young black man for a crime her own son has committed, delivering the young black man into the hands of a lynch mob in order to save her son. It presents an uncommon dramatic portrayal of white motherhood that umasks the racist and gendered assumptions of white male dominance and lynch mob mentality.

Sunday, April 19: In Georgia Douglas Johnson’s Blue-Eyed Black Boy (1930), a black mother attempts to avert the lynching of her son by revealing to a lynch mob that her son was the product of rape by the white governor. The play thrusts the issue of the sexual exploitation of the black woman into public discussion.

Sunday, May 17: The harrowing play, Safe (1929), by Georgia Douglas Johnson, depicts Liza, a pregnant mother, going into labor. After news of the lynching of an innocent black boy in town, Liza falls into a panicking state while her baby is born, and after learning that her baby is a boy, does the unthinkable. The reading will be followed by a discussion with Prof. Koritha Mitchell (Ohio State University), an expert on anti-lynching plays and author of the book Living with Lynching: African American Lynching Plays, Performance, and Citizenship, 1890 - 1930 (University of Illinois Press, 2011)

Sunday, June 7: readings of all previous plays (each about 15 minutes), as well as an excerpt of Rachel (1914), by Angelina Weld Grimké

Colloquy Collective’s vision is to be an alternative voice in the popular discourse regarding performance, identity, culture, and art; and to be a venue for complex theatrical conversations on how social imbalance affects (and has affected) power, relationships, and history. There is a lack of dialogue between “traditional” theater and “multicultural” theater that creates unnecessary conflict, and leaves all sides misinformed. There are traditions inherent to all communities that effect audience response to performance: the organization intends to make those traditions available to broader audiences in order to create holistic theatrical experiences for all those involved

Courtney Harge (Director) has been involved with arts organizations in capacities for the last fifteen years: she was a company stage manager for her performing arts high school; a dance instructor; and founder/president of a performing arts organization. For the past four years, she has also worked in an administrative capacity for five NYC cultural institutions: Gibney Dance; the Elaine Kaufman Cultural Center; the Public Theater; Theater for the New City; the New York Foundation for the Arts; and, currently, Fractured Atlas.

Part of JACK's series FORWARD FERGUSON, a season-long firehouse of arts and activism around racial justice.