New Play, First Reading

The developmental staged reading of my play “When the Righteous Triumph” – about the coming of the civil rights movement to Tampa in 1960 - took place three days ago at Stageworks in Tampa’s Channel District. What I discovered in the audience talkback was that most people found the drama moving and informative. There were a couple of interesting criticisms, though: two spectators complained about too many “talking heads” in one of the play’s last scenes. That struck me as an easy fix: I immediately saw how I could turn a three-way conversation by attorney Cody Fowler and two others into a monologue by Reverend A. Leon Lowry taking half the time. But there was a further problem brought to my attention by director Karla Hartley, with whom I’ve worked many times and whose instincts usually harmonize with mine.

What Karla said was that she found the play not “visceral” enough: the spectators may have learned a lot about Tampa’s racial history in 1960, but there weren’t enough scenes stimulating emotion, suspense, worry. We only talked about this for a few minutes, but still it struck me: the white bigots in the play were only given brief scenes in which they heckled or taunted or threatened the Black demonstrators; I’d failed to give these racists scenes in which they – fleshed out as full characters - plotted their evils. To do so could palpably add to the play’s suspense and the audience’s concern for the protestors. To mention one prime opportunity: the assassination attempt on Reverend Lowry and his wife (which really happened) could be carried out not by anonymous fanatics, as in the present version, but by two or three of the segregationists whom we’ve come to know – and to worry over.  This would also give me a chance to remind the audience of the noxious beliefs that drove rogues like these to oppose racial equality.

So that’s one of my tasks for late spring/early summer: to rewrite “When the Righteous Triumph” so that we “feel” the danger of civil rights work in the Florida of 1960, and so that the audience directly encounters the forces that are threatening to strike out at courageous demonstrators. I’m already in love with the idea – and eager to get started. Then it’ll be time for another staged reading – all in preparation for a complete production in March of 2023.