We’re moving into the home stretch with the “Freedom Summer” play! We gathered an extraordinary group of actors including Hattie Winston-Wheeler, Adam Huss (“Power”), Art Evans, Erica Gimpel, Tico Wells, Jacques Smith and others… around my dining room table for the reading. There were 22 of us, including Ricardo Khan, Director and co-writer and myself. My dining room was stuffed! The reading and the discussion after were so incredibly helpful to Rick and myself. Based on this table read, we will do some tweaks, modest rewrites and then we must release this opus to the universe. May I say, it is very powerful. More on the premier later!
From my very personal standpoint, this play will mark the end of my creative journey through the Civil Rights Movement. I feel, of course, very good about my novel,”Freshwater Road,” an homage to the Civil Rights Movement and now this beautiful play, “Freedom Summer.” It’s time for me to move on from the 1960’s in mind, heart and soul. I believe now what I’ve always believed that the American Civil Rights Movement was one of the most extraordinary movements for change the world has ever seen because, it was non-violent even as the violent forces against us did not abate. Amazing. History will frame it as brilliant, remarkable, compassionate and forward-thinking. I am forever proud that I was there!
–DN
