Previews: BIPOC Play Reading Series To Include THE BALLAD OF EMMETT TILL And FOR COLORED GIRLS... At Straz TECO Theatre

Coming to TECO Theatre on Sunday, March 5 at 2:30 pm is The Straz Center's third annual BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and people of color) Play-Reading Series.

Featured award-winning playwrights are sisters Ntozake Shange and Ifa Bayeza. While Ifa cannot attend the in-person presentation, she will be on Zoom to answer audience questions and discuss her process.

This BIPOC Play Reading will feature excerpts from Ifa's The Ballad of Emmett Till. Ntozake's For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide / When the Rainbow Is Enuf is a series of poems about seven women who have suffered from living in a racist and sexist society.

Broadway World caught up with Ifa to talk about the story behind the story.

Ifa Bayeza is an award-winning playwright, director, novelist, and educator. Plays include The Till Trilogy (The Ballad of Emmett Till, That Summer in Sumner and Benevolence); String Theory; Welcome to Wandaland; Infants of the Spring; the musicals Charleston Olio, Bunk Johnson ... a blues poem and KID ZERO, and the novel, Some Sing, Some Cry, co-authored with her sister.

The Ballad of Emmett Till is the true account of a black 14-year-old boy who was tortured and brutally murdered for allegedly flirting with a white woman in 1955 Mississippi. Ifa contacted friends, family, teachers, classmates, and youth churchgoers to learn everything she could about this horrific event and the young man behind the headline. She wanted to know about Emmett's role as an only child in his family and his process of establishing his place in the world.

"Since childhood, I was really fascinated by this story. Like so many young people, that was my first experience perceiving the idea of mortality, the vulnerability of youth to death. His was such a tortuous experience. That affected me and activated me. I was an activist from that moment on. In my career as a playwright, I wound up focusing on African-American history in different forms - novels, musicals, and dramatic plays."

Ifa went to the library and immersed herself in research beyond the basic bullet points of Emmet's story. By revisiting stories in magazines, she found many contradictions. Instead of writing a fictional account, she decided to work on a nonfictional drama telling Emmet's story.

"Critical fabulation is to take the information that we have and get in between and underneath the lines of text. That became a remarkable journey. As soon as I made that decision, the story moved toward me. I had an incredible opportunity to learn about his preteen adolescence. I could capture his essence, the life, and the lie he represented like so many of our slain black youth."

Ifa wanted to reflect Emmett from the viewpoint of his peers. She spoke with Emmett's cousins, then-sixteen-year-old Wheeler Parker and then-twelve-year-old Simeon Wright were with him the two weeks leading up to his murder.

"They were critical to my research. Their anecdotes and stories about Emmett helped me see him as a fully-realized human being and character and understand and discover his uniqueness - for example, how he stuttered. He was quick-witted and loved to talk. He didn't see his stutter as an impediment but rather as part of the rhythm of his being. He loved humor and was a prankster, full of the joy of adolescent youth. The response from living witnesses and writing down their accounts was vital - not just for me - but for future students of that period of our history. It was a remarkable experience to try to recount in writing, to allow him to represent so many other young people whose lives have been taken in a similar way. In retelling this story of Emmett, I'm hoping to bolster this generation of black youth and American youth to understand their own agency and capacity to resist oppression and the subjugation that is being attempted against us."

She hopes to evoke empathy and provoke dialogue and action to advance understanding of human rights and commitment to the original principles of this nation.

"All people are entitled to life...." She paused, then continued, "Life... liberty and the unique pursuit of their happiness."

The BIPOC play reading series is FREE at 2:30 pm in the TECO Theater. Reservations are required by calling 813.229.STAR (7827) or visit the website at https://www.strazcenter.org/events/2223-season/voices-of-the-community/play-reading-series.

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