The play is a poetic exploration of Emmett Till, in which Till, in surreal and dreamlike sequences, confronts other people from his life, including his murderers, seeking to make sense of his needless death. In the second act, a character emerges from the audience to address Emmett and pivot the play into a more didactic direction.[2]
In March 1986, Mario Cuomo and Kitty Carlisle Hart presented Morrison with the New York State Governor's Arts Award for Dreaming Emmett and other works.[3]
Development
The play was commissioned by the New York State Writers Institute and the Capital District Humanities Program at SUNY-Albany, to commemorate the first celebration of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. The Institute and its related programming were supported by Governor Mario Cuomo and the state legislature as a way to establish Albany as a destination for the development of quality writers.[4] Program director Kathryn Gibson suggested to Morrison that she write a play, an endeavor that Morrison had been interested in pursuing for some time. Although she was a frequent reader of plays, she rarely attended the theatre.[5]
The play is often described as Morrison's first attempt at playwriting, though she had written the book and lyrics for New Orleans, a musical that received a six-week workshop production in 1982 and staged readings at New York Shakespeare Festival in 1984.[6]
When asked by an interviewer about her transition to writing plays, she said: "I keep asking Bill Kennedy to find one American who wrote novels first and then successful plays. Just one. And neither he nor I could come up with any one American. Even Henry James was a failure. He tried it three times and each time it was worse than the other. But I feel I have a strong point. I write good dialogue. It's theatrical. It moves. It just doesn't hang there."[1] Morrison, who also acknowledged the tension between writer and director as different from the solo pursuit of a novelist, wrote the play in the midst of developing her 1987 novel Beloved (which would go on to win the Pulitzer Prize in 1988).[1][7] The play utilized dreams as a framework to tackle the subject, echoing her belief in the cathartic power of dream and nightmare. She selected Gilbert Moses as a director because she considered him to be sympathetic to the material, with a forceful perspective on shaping the play, as opposed to other directors who might be "mere facilitators". The dream within a dream structure also supported her goal to bring Emmett Till to life on stage, instead of retelling the circumstances of his death.[8][9]
"This area has a strong history of abolitionism that has surfaced over and over again in the literature of Black people. There's an old, established Black community here," Morrison told the Amsterdam News. "This is also a professional, white collar city. it has all the tensions that exist in cities with Blacks and whites living together. Albany wasn't invented by Wall Street, it's not a resort town, it's not a bedroom community. I wanted to do the play here. I needed a certain kind of space in which to start this production. I wanted a community response. New York means theater-goers primarily. I wanted the response of neighborhood people."[10]
Production
In November 1984, Writers Institute director Tom Smith met with Morrison and Capital Rep artistic directors Bruce Bouchard and Peter Clough, to propose that Morrison's play be produced at the theatre. They greenlit the project without seeing the script.[5]
Auditions took place at the New Dramatists building on West 44th Street in New York City. Present were Bouchard, Moses and Morrison. They auditioned more than 30 people on the first day alone. Joseph Phillips, eventually selected for the lead role, wasn't scheduled to audition. Lorraine Toussaint, eventually cast in the role of Tamara, was ill with flu and Moses interrupted her reading to have her skip to another section.[11]
In fall 1985, sculptor Willa Shalit was contracted by Morrison and Gilbert Moses to develop a series of masks for the show. Moses was originally unsure about the idea of masks, but Morrison insisted on the device.[12] Some of the masks were small, lifelike masks in latex, while others were large, oversized grotesque heads worn by the actors over a wire mesh headgear. Shalit had previously met artistic director Bruce Bouchard while working on a project at Radio City Music Hall, and contributed a death mask for Capital Repertory Theatre's production of The Wake of Jamie Foster.[13]
Designer Dale F. Jordan was a frequent artist at the theatre, having joined the company during its days as Lexington Conservatory Theatre in the late 1970s. The design process began as an exchange of sketches and ideas with Gilbert Moses, emphasizing abstract imagery and dreamscapes, later refined to be more concrete and suggestive of dream, rather than attempting to depict all the aspects of the fantasy. Elements such as a complex scene involving a chair that consumes Emmett in a surrealistic way were revised to be less complicated.[14]
Synopsis
Emmett, a 14 year old boy, begins by reminiscing about how he spent his summer vacation in August, 1955, gradually revealing that he is the spirit of the murdered Emmett Till, engaged in a dreamlike state of thought. In surreal scenes, he interacts with a variety of characters, some donning masks to represent different stages in the characters' lives. He talks to his young Black friends from 1955, George and Eustace, and to his mother, Ma. He confronts Princess, the woman he accosted, and Major and Buck, the white men responsible for his murder.
Tamara, a Black girl, gets up from the theatre audience and walks onstage, disrupting the scene. The characters are confused because she is not part of their narrative, and exists outside Emmett's dream. Tamara confronts each of the characters, including Emmett, with her contemporary perspective, including gender power dynamics. Emmett reveals that he may not actually be Emmett Till; instead, he may be another murdered boy who dreams he is Emmett Till. The characters discuss how they perhaps didn't know the real Emmett Till. Emmett, who has built a kite, flies the kite as he exits. Tamara returns to her seat in the audience.
Mask Design and Construction Assistants - Stacy Morse, Marlene Marda, Shelley Wyant
Voice Consultant - Lorraine Toussaint
Assistant to Ms. Shalit - Debra Paitchel
Composer/Sound Design - Kevin Bartlett
Production Stage Manager - Patricia Frey
Technical Director - David Yergan
Properties Master - Janet Storck
Producing Artistic Directors - Bruce Bouchard, Peter Clough[15]
Premiere
The public premiere of Dreaming Emmett took place on January 5, 1986. It was followed by a reception at the Steuben Athletic Club. "The reception was nearly over at 7:30 when a beaming Morrison arrived and strode through the room to bravos and applause," said the Albany Times Union. The event included remarks by Morrison, director Gilbert Moses and William Kennedy. "I think the play will make racial as well as theatrical headlines," Kennedy said. "...it raises issues I've never seen raised before." In attendance was Gene Shalit, Willa Shalit, Albany Mayor Thomas Michael Whalen III, SUNY Chancellor Clifton R. Wharton Jr., assemblymember William F. Passannante, publisher Dardis McNamee, and two Broadway producers—Michel Stuart and Barbara Ligeti-Hewlitt, among others.[16][17]
Related events
The Capital District Humanities Program, a co-funder of the production, organized Protest Progress: Black History Through Literature, a series of regional events surrounding Dreaming Emmett, featuring Black writers and guest lecturers.
Prophecy and Power of Political Theater - a post-show series at Capital Repertory Theatre included lectures by Gilbert Moses, historian Lerone Bennett Jr., scholar Hortense Spillers and playwright Amiri Baraka.
From Slavery to Civil Rights - a three-month reading series of Black authors hosted by libraries throughout the region.[18][19]
Critical reception
The play received positive to mixed reviews, with praise for Morrison's language but criticism of the form and production[20] The play has a unique style and form. Margaret Croyden, in her review of Dreaming Emmett for the New York Times, noted the control of Till's imagination on the play's elements and complex structural motifs, such as a play within a play, and creation of a "non-naturalistic" and "nonlinear" narrative.[1]The Saratogian praised the sensory, poetic details of the dialog and the dramatic craft of the first act, but considered the second act to be unsatisfying dry and academic.[21] By contrast, Bob Goepfert of The Knickerbocker News disliked the first act but praised the second. The entrance of Tamara at the end of the first act in particular galvanized the energy of the production. Goepfert praised Morrison's writing skills, despite her inexperience with drama, as compelling, expressing ideas that linger in profound ways.[22] Critic Dan DiNicola described it as "confused and confusing" but appreciated Morrison's sharp dialog.[2]Variety echoed this critique, calling it "verbose, redundant and confusing," though it praised Joseph C. Phillips' performance and the production values of the theatre.[23]
Albany journalist Martin P. Kelly praised the importance of the work but criticized "...theatricality that gets between the audience and the theme." Kelly noted good performances and remarked that the play "raises an issue but does not provide intriguing drama. There is no real plot and the characterizations are generally superficial."[24] The Amsterdam News applauded a "first-rate cast" and the "ingenious" direction of Gilbert Moses. Morrison also spoke of the significance of locating the production in Albany.[10]
Other press found it a profound experience. "In the end we are not left with a feeling of completeness, rather we are left with a clearer knowledge of the conflicts and the problems that are continuing on the stage of life. For this I would recommend Dreaming Emmett," said a review in Concordiesis.[25] "A two-act, one-set eight-character intensely theatrical experience, the play has a convoluted plot line that moves across time past and present and unravels like an onion," said The Berkshire Eagle. "Every layer seems necessary to the shape and sense of the play and our reaction to it, but at the end, when all has unraveled, we have nothing solid left to remember or set our minds to rest upon. And this is both the tantalizing strength and the disturbing force of the play's intentions."[26]Metroland found the acting ensemble to be among the best the theatre had produced, finding fault mainly with the extraneous production elements that distracted from the play's core drama.[27] The Troy Sunday Record also praised the play.[28]
Scholar Hortense Spillers, speaking at a post-performance lecture at the theatre in Albany, praised the play, which she noted was not representational of the story of Emmett Till, but an exploration of deeper issues through the use of poetic literary devices and theatrical expressionism. She pointed to the masks as "overwhelming" the play with their shocking reveal and distortion of space, manifesting Till's internal perspectives.
Spillers also recalled her personal connection to the subject, as being close in age to Till (she was born a year later than him) and that his murder was a personal awakening for her. "The killers of Emmett Till are as much objects of myth...as is Emmett himself," she said. The play questions whether either Black or white people can escape from their own mythologies. "We are trapped inside each others dreams, that are in fact a nightmare." The dream metaphor, said Spillers, is central to the play's meaning, and it is a collective one. "We do not dream alone."[29]
More recently, Princeton scholar Rhaisa Williams analyzed the usage of dreams and dreaming motifs, as found within a version of the script predating the 1986 production version. She posits that the dreaming structure allowed Morrison flexibility to engage with the subject matter, avoiding the "commemoration machine" that might otherwise overshadow her themes. Williams also examines how the character of Tamara reacts to and confronts the Emmett character in an unexpected and abrasive way, disrupting audience sympathies.[30]
Legacy
Members of the production described it as difficult, with tensions between the director and the theatre staff. Producing Artistic Director Bruce Bouchard described Morrison as "tough, but fair" in guarding her work, but criticized the director's extravagant and costly production as overshadowing the nuance of the play's language. Cast and crew struggled with Moses' working methods and behavior. The play was a significant box office success, however, and the theatre's best-selling show that decade.[31][32][33]
The show has never again received a full production. In 2018, director Daniel Banks received permission from Morrison to conduct a workshop of the play with students. He noted that there were multiple versions and revisions of the script, including versions with different character names and somewhat different endings. A selection of scenes was performed at the 2019 symposium "Performing Morrison", read by students at Washington University in St. Louis. A a staged reading was produced at the University of West Georgia in 2020, also directed by Daniel Banks.[34][35]
Related Research Articles
Chloe Anthony Wofford Morrison, known as Toni Morrison, was an American novelist and editor. Her first novel, The Bluest Eye, was published in 1970. The critically acclaimed Song of Solomon (1977) brought her national attention and won the National Book Critics Circle Award. In 1988, Morrison won the Pulitzer Prize for Beloved (1987); she was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1993.
Joseph Connor Phillips is an American actor, writer, and conservative Christian commentator. He is best known for his role as Martin Kendall on the long-running NBC sitcom The Cosby Show, and as Justus Ward on the soap opera General Hospital.
Six Characters in Search of an Author is an Italian play by Luigi Pirandello, written and first performed in 1921. An absurdist metatheatric play about the relationship among authors, their characters, and theatre practitioners, it premiered at the Teatro Valle in Rome to a mixed reception, with shouts from the audience of "Manicomio!" ("Madhouse!") and "Incommensurabile!", a reaction to the play's illogical progression. Reception improved at subsequent performances, especially after Pirandello provided for the play's third edition, published in 1925, a foreword clarifying its structure and ideas.
Lorraine Toussaint is a Trinidadian-born actress based in the United States. She is the recipient of various accolades, including a Black Reel Award, a Critics' Choice Television Award and a Screen Actors Guild Award.
The Bluest Eye, published in 1970, is the first novel written by Toni Morrison. The novel takes place in Lorain, Ohio, and tells the story of a young African-American girl named Pecola who grew up following the Great Depression. Set in 1941, the story is about how she is consistently regarded as "ugly" due to her mannerisms and dark skin. As a result, she develops an inferiority complex, which fuels her desire for the blue eyes she equates with "whiteness".
Timothy Busfield is an American actor and director. He played Elliot Weston on the television series thirtysomething; Mark, the brother-in-law of Ray Kinsella, in Field of Dreams; and Danny Concannon on the television series The West Wing. In 1991 he received a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series for thirtysomething. He is the founder of the 501(c)(3) non-profit arts organization Theatre for Children, Inc. In 2024 he was inducted into the Sacramento Baseball Hall of Fame as a pitcher.
L. Scott Caldwell is an American actress perhaps best known for her roles as Deputy U.S. Marshall Erin Poole in The Fugitive (1993) and Rose on the television series Lost.
Willa Shalit is an American social entrepreneur and strategic advisor. She is widely recognized for her work as an artist, theatre and television producer, photographer and author/editor.
Maxine Audley was an English theatre and film actress. She made her professional stage debut in July 1940 at the Open Air Theatre. Audley performed with the Old Vic company and the Royal Shakespeare Company many times. She appeared in more than 20 films, the first of which was the 1948 adaptation of Leo Tolstoy's novel Anna Karenina.
Helen Carte Boulter, also known as Helen Lenoir, was a Scottish businesswoman known for her diplomatic skills and grasp of detail. Beginning as his secretary, and later marrying, impresario and hotelier Richard D'Oyly Carte, she is best remembered for her stewardship of the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company and Savoy Hotel from the end of the 19th century into the early 20th century.
Gilbert Moses III was an American director. He was also known for his work in the Civil Rights movement, as a staff member of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and founder of the touring company, the Free Southern Theater toured the South during the 1960s.
Sofia Landon Geier is a television soap opera writer and actress. She is also credited as Sofia Landon or Sophia Landon.
Oakley "Tad" Hall III was an American playwright, director, and author. The co-founder and first artistic director of Lexington Conservatory Theatre, in 1978 he suffered a traumatic brain injury in a fall from a bridge; he spent decades in recovery and in the process of creating a new life. He is the subject of the 2004 documentary The Loss of Nameless Things.
Mary Gallagher is an American playwright, screenwriter, novelist, actress, director and teacher. For six years, she was artistic director of Gypsy, a theatre company in the Hudson Valley, New York, which collaborated with many artists to create site-specific mask-and-puppet music-theatre with texts and lyrics by Gallagher. These pieces included Premanjali and the 7 Geese Brothers, Ama and The Scottish Play. In 1996-97, she directed the Playwrights Workshop at the University of Iowa, and she taught playwriting and screenwriting at New York University/Tisch School of the Arts from 2001 to 2010. She is a member of Actors & Writers, a theater company in the Hudson Valley, and the Ensemble Studio Theater in New York City. She is an alumna of New Dramatists, where she developed many of her plays and created and moderated the series, "You Can Make a Life: Conversations with Playwrights" from 1994 to 2001.
Capital Repertory Theatre is a 309-seat professional regional theatre in Albany, New York. Capital Rep is the only theatre in the Capital District that is a member of the League of Resident Theatres (LORT). As a member, it operates under collective bargaining agreements with Actors' Equity Association and other theatre worker unions.
The New York State Writers Institute is a literary organization based at the University at Albany in Albany, New York. It sponsors the Albany Book Festival, the Albany Film Festival, Visiting Writers Series, Classic Film Series, the Trolley online literary magazine, and the New York State Summer Writers Institute, and New York State Summer Young Writers Institute in collaboration with Skidmore College.
Ifa Bayeza is a playwright, producer, and conceptual theater artist. She wrote the play The Ballad of Emmett Till, which earned her the Edgar Award for Best Play in 2009. She is the sister of Ntozake Shange, and directed Shange's A Photograph: Lovers in Motion, which was a part of the Negro Ensemble Company's 2015 Year of the Woman Play Reading Series in New York City.
Lorna French is a British playwright and the two-time winner of the Alfred Fagon Award for the best new play by a Black playwright of African or Caribbean descent living in the United Kingdom. Her Fagon Award winner plays are Safe House and City Melodies. French is of mixed Jamaican and Zimbabwean heritage.
Grand View is the first produced play by Pulitzer Prize-winning author William Kennedy. Its world premiere was at Capital Repertory Theatre in Albany, NY, starring prolific television actor Robert Hogan.
New Orleans: the Storyville Musical is a musical by Toni Morrison, Donald McKayle and Dorothea Freitag, set in 1917 in New Orleans' Storyville district. Produced in workshop in 1982, it also received staged readings at New York Shakespeare Festival in 1984 but was never fully produced. It was Morrison's first venture in the medium of theatre.
↑ Williams, Rhaisa (Fall 2020). "People Know Him by Name: Time, Justice and Memory in Toni Morrison's Dreaming Emmett". College Literature. 47 (4): 721–751.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
