McGuire Proscenium Stage / Oct 1 – Nov 6, 2016 by MIKE WILEY STUDY GUIDE Inside THE PLAY Synopsis and Characters • 3 THE AUTHOR About the Playwright and Form • 7 CULTURAL CONTEXT Timeline and Locations • 8 General Vocabulary • 10 Glossary/General Information • 12 THE GUTHRIE PRODUCTION Notes from the Creative Team • 18 ADDITIONAL INFORMATION Bringing the Play into the Classroom • 20 For Further Understanding • 22 Play guides are made possible by Guthrie Theater Study Guide Copyright 2016 DRAMATURG Jo Holcomb GRAPHIC DESIGNER Akemi Waldusky RESEARCH Jo Holcomb All rights reserved. With the exception of classroom use by teachers and Guthrie Theater, 818 South 2nd Street, Minneapolis, MN 55415 individual personal use, no part of this Play Guide may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including ADMINISTRATION 612.225.6000 photocopying or recording, or by an information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Some materials BOX OFFICE 612.377.2224 or 1.877.44.STAGE TOLL-FREE published herein are written especially for our Guide. Others are reprinted guthrietheater.org • Joseph Haj, artistic director by permission of their publishers. Jo Holcomb: 612.225.6117 | Carla Steen: 612.225.6118 The Guthrie Theater, founded in 1963, is an American center for theater performance, The Guthrie Theater receives support from the National Endowment production, education and professional training. By presenting both classical literature and for the Arts. This activity is made possible in part by the Minnesota State Arts Board, through an appropriation by the Minnesota State new work from diverse cultures, the Guthrie illuminates the common humanity connecting Legislature. The Minnesota State Arts Board received additional funds to support this activity from the National Endowment for the Arts. Minnesota to the peoples of the world. 2 \ GUTHRIE THEATER THE PLAY Synopsis Members of the cast of The Parchman Hour PHOTO: LAUREN MUELLER In 1961, thirteen riders – at Parchman Farm, and bring “act” (singing a song, telling a men and women, black and attention to their activism. The joke, reading from the Bible — the white – boarded a bus in Freedom Riders, and the movement only book we were allowed) and in Washington, DC bound for to desegregate interstate travel, between acts we had ‘commercials’ New Orleans via Mississippi would not be deterred. for the products we lived with and Alabama. Their goal: Presented in the style of the every day, like the prison soap, to assert their legal right variety shows of yesteryear, the the black-and-white striped skirts, to cross state lines as a The Parchman Hour explores the awful food, etc. We did this unified, integrated group. three of the tensest months every evening, as I recall; it gave They barely made it out of of 1961. The play brings to the us something to do during the day, Alabama alive. stage powerful oral histories and thinking up our cell’s act for the conversations from the Freedom evening. Over the course of the next three Rides’ most iconic protagonists and months, approximately 300 other antagonists. — Mimi Real, Freedom Rider, 1961 riders took up the mantle and followed the path of those first Did you know that at Parchman, brave few. Mobs brutally assaulted to pass the time and to keep our many. Others were arrested and, spirits up, we ‘invented’ a radio instead of posting bail, chose program? I don’t recall that we to serve sentences in one of the named it, but ‘The Parchman Hour’ most brutal prisons in the South, would have been a good name. the Mississippi State Penitentiary Each cell had to contribute a short GUTHRIE THEATER \ 3 THE PLAY The Characters JOHN LEWIS JAMES LEONARD FARMER, JR. JOAN TRUMPAUER MULHOLLAND Student Nonviolent National Director, Congress of Racial Equality 19-year-old Duke University student, Coordinating Committee (CORE), Freedom Rider Freedom Rider (SNCC) leader, Freedom Rider FREDERICK LEONARD MIRIAM FEINGOLD REAL (MIMI) CAROL RUTH SILVER Tennessee State University student, Swarthmore College, 22 years old, Freedom Rider student, Freedom Rider Freedom Rider STOKELY CARMICHAEL STEPHEN JOHN GREEN WILLIAM HOOKER SVANOE 19-year-old student, Howard University, student, Middlebury College, Freedom Rider graduate student, University of Minnesota, Freedom Rider Freedom Rider LUCRETIA COLLINS HANK THOMAS JEAN THOMPSON Freedom Rider Howard University student, CORE worker, Freedom Rider Freedom Rider 4 \ GUTHRIE THEATER PAULINE KNIGHT-OFOSU JIMMY MCDONALD Tennessee State University student, CORE member, Freedom Rider Freedom Rider (pictured: Freedom Riders Jimmy McDonald (right) and James Peck (center) talk to reporter Bill Cook (left) upon their arrival in New Orleans. MERYLE JOY REAGON JESSE HARRIS BERNARD LAFAYETTE Tennessee State University student, Freedom high school student – Jackson, MS resident student, American Baptist Theological Rider – arrested participating in bus station Seminary, Freedom Rider integration action DORIS CASTLE 17 years old, Freedom Rider JIM ZWERG student, Beloit College, Freedom Rider (Freedom Riders, including Jim Zwerg (far left) and Lucretia Collins (looking at camera), wait to board a bus in Alabama) GUTHRIE THEATER \ 5 THE PLAY DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR. ROBERT FRANCIS KENNEDY (1925-1968) Civil Rights activist and president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference United States Attorney General (pictured: Martin Luther King, Jr. encourages Freedom Riders as they board a bus for Jackson, Miss., 1961. (Paul SchutzerTime & Life Pictures/Getty Image) EUGENE “BULL” CONNOR JOHN PATTERSON Birmingham, Alabama public safety commissioner 44th Governor of Alabama (1959 – 1963) DEPUTY TYSON Officer in charge, Parchman Prison Farm (pictured: Governor John Patterson confers with Attorney General Robert Kennedy.) 6 \ GUTHRIE THEATER THE AUTHOR About the Playwright About the Form DOCUMENTARY THEATER Currently, a new form of documentary theater has The Parchman Hour is a work of emerged, characterized by art that can be categorized as collaborative development docudrama. of the theater performance among directors, designers, Documentary performances playwrights, actors and their often emerge in response documentary subjects (living to social or political crises; and dead). Perhaps the most documentary playwrights offer notable example of the current their audiences a theatrical documentary theater moment Mike Wiley presentation of real events to is The Laramie Project (2000), a inspire critical questions about play about the murder of college Actor and playwright Mike Wiley history, memory and justice as student Matthew Shepard, has spent the last decade fulfilling well as provoke social action to created by Moisés Kaufman his mission to bring educational change the world outside the and members of the Tectonic theater to young audiences and theater walls. Theatre Project. In the first communities across the country. In eighteen months following the the early days of his career, Wiley In the history of American murder, the company traveled found few theatrical resources theater there have been several from New York to Laramie, to shine a light on key events important examples of the form. Wyoming to interview members and figures in African-American The first is the work produced of the community about the history. To bring these stories to under the auspices of the event, its aftermath, and their life, he started his own production Federal Theater Project (1935- attitudes and beliefs regarding company. 1939). Their “Living Newspapers” homosexuality. The company’s used a form borrowed from interview material became the Through his performances, Wiley propaganda of the times and centerpiece of a collaboratively has introduced countless students the workers’ theater popular built play that went through and communities to the legacies in early twentieth century an extensive workshop of Emmett Till, Henry “Box” Brown Europe and the Soviet Union. development. and more. His most recent works The second appears during the include a one-man play based on 1960s, with the social upheaval Tim Tyson’s memoir Blood Done surrounding the Civil Rights Sign My Name and The Parchman Movement and the Vietnam Hour. War. Emerging playwrights and theater used the documentary form as a way to explore new boundaries of theatrical form and space. Happenings and autobiographical solo performances found new life in this era. GUTHRIE THEATER \ 7 CULTURAL CONTEXT Timeline and Locations Freedom Rides, 1961 The Freedom Riders set out THURSDAY, MAY 4, 1961 to challenge the status quo by riding various forms of public Washington D.C. transportation in the South to CORE (Congress of Racial challenge local laws or customs Equality) Freedom Ride leaves that enforced segregation. The from Washington D.C. Led by Freedom Rides, and the violent CORE Director James Farmer, 13 reactions they provoked, riders (seven black, six white) left bolstered the credibility of Washington, D.C. on Greyhound the American Civil Rights and Trailways buses. Their plan Movement and called national was to ride through Virginia, the attention to the violent Carolinas, Georgia, Alabama, and disregard for the law that was Mississippi, ending with a rally in Members of CORE prepare for their journey used to enforce segregation south in Washington, D.C. (Left to right) New Orleans, Louisiana. in the southern United States. Edward Blankenheim, James Farmer, Genevieve Hughes, the Reverend B. Elton Riders were arrested for Cox and Henry