Reviews
“While the historical setting of Turpentine Jake takes place more than fifty years ago, debt peonage is as much an issue in the present as it was in the past. Turpentine Jake is a play for our time,” says Elias Wondimu, publisher and editorial director, Marymount Institute Press and Tsehai Publishers. [2]
“Turpentine Jake is a play full of mystery and song, with an epic story and indelible characters that lifts some dark times out of the piney forests of Florida and into the hearts of the audience. On the cloud of an ending that is as honest as it is surprising, I left the theater feeling thankful and hopeful about what theater can accomplish with wonderful material.” —Constance Congdon, Playwright in Residence at Amherst College
“Turpentine Jake is a breakthrough play that highlights the social milieu surrounding a forgotten chapter of American life … a 21st century warning to all of us when we consider the ongoing balancing act of business needs versus the dictates of morality and ethics.” —Valencia E. Matthews, Ph.D., Director of Theatre at Florida A&M University
“Turpentine Jake is that rare synthesis of history and theatre that stuns us with its authenticity, and shakes us with its dramatic charge. Through sweat, music, laughter, and pain it draws us into a deep examination of race and our national character. This play will live in your heart for a long time after you have experienced it.” —Kevin Lawler, Producing Artistic Director of The Great Plains Theatre Conference, Omaha
“Turpentine Jake is an evocative and authentic glimpse of life in the Turpentine camps. A labor of love carefully researched and artfully told.” —Laurie Kay Sommers, Ph.D., Folklorist and Director, Traditions of Turpentine Project, Valdosta State University
“Turpentine Jake is a compelling account, written in a richly textured language, that distills an historic disgrace into compelling action, spiced with humor and American magic realism.” —Ron West, Ph.D., Prof. Theatre, Metropolitan Community College, Omaha, Nebraska [3]
Chiefland is a city in Levy County, Florida, United States. The population was 2,316 at the 2020 census. Chiefland calls itself "The Gem of the Suwannee Valley" and was incorporated in 1913.
Sarasota is a city in and the county seat of Sarasota County, Florida, United States. It is located in Southwest Florida, the southern end of the Greater Tampa Bay Area, and north of Fort Myers and Punta Gorda. Its official limits include Sarasota Bay and several barrier islands between the bay and the Gulf of Mexico. Sarasota is a principal city of the Sarasota metropolitan area. According to the 2020 U.S. census, Sarasota had a population of 54,842.
Loyola Marymount University (LMU) is a private Jesuit and Marymount research university in Los Angeles, California. It is located on the west side of the city near Playa Vista. LMU is the parent school to Loyola Law School. LMU offers 55 major and 59 minor undergraduate degrees and programs across six undergraduate colleges. The Graduate Division offers 47 master's degree programs, one education doctorate, one doctorate in juridical science, a Juris Doctor and 13 credential programs. LMU's sports teams are called the Lions and compete at the NCAA Division I level as members of the West Coast Conference in 20 sports.
Peon usually refers to a person subject to peonage: any form of wage labor, financial exploitation, coercive economic practice, or policy in which the victim or a laborer (peon) has little control over employment or economic conditions. Peon and peonage can refer to both the colonial period and post-colonial period of Latin America, as well as the period after the end of slavery in the United States, when "Black Codes" were passed to retain African-American freedmen as labor through other means.
Playa del Rey is a seaside suburb in the Santa Monica Bay and the South Bay region of Los Angeles County, California. It has a ZIP code of 90293 and area codes of 310 and 424. As of 2018, the community had a population of 16,230 people.
In American theater, summer stock theater is a theater that presents stage productions only in the summer. The name combines the season with the tradition of staging shows by a resident company, reusing stock scenery and costumes. Summer stock theaters frequently take advantage of seasonal weather by having their productions outdoors, under tents set up temporarily for their use, or in barns.
The longleaf pine is a pine species native to the Southeastern United States, found along the coastal plain from East Texas to southern Virginia, extending into northern and central Florida. In this area it is also known as "yellow pine" or "long leaf yellow pine", although it is properly just one out of a number of species termed yellow pine. It reaches a height of 30–35 m (98–115 ft) and a diameter of 0.7 m (28 in). In the past, before extensive logging, they reportedly grew to 47 m (154 ft) with a diameter of 1.2 m (47 in). The tree is a cultural symbol of the Southern United States, being the official state tree of Alabama. This particular species is one of the eight pine tree species that falls under the "Pine" designation as the state tree of North Carolina.
Intiman Theatre Festival in Seattle, Washington, was founded in 1972 as a resident theatre by Margaret "Megs" Booker, who named it for August Strindberg's Stockholm theater. With a self-declared focus on "a resident acting ensemble, fidelity to the playwright's intentions and a close relationship between actor and audience", the Intiman soon called itself as "Seattle's classic theater". Its debut season in 1972 included Rosmersholm, The Creditors, The Underpants, and Brecht on Brecht. The theater has been host to Tony-nominated Director Bartlett Sher, Tony-nominated actress Celia Keenan-Bolger, and movie actor Tom Skerritt. It was also home to the world premieres of the Tony-winning Broadway musical The Light in the Piazza, Craig Lucas's Singing Forest and Dan Savage's "Miracle!". Lucas also served as the Associate Artistic Director. Intiman won the 2006 Regional Theatre Tony Award.
El Teatro Campesino is a Chicano theatre company in California. Performing in both English and Spanish, El Teatro Campesino was founded in 1965 as the cultural arm of the United Farm Workers and the Chicano Movement with the "full support of César Chávez." Originally based in Delano, California, during the Delano Strike, the theatre is currently based in San Juan Bautista, California.
Luis Miguel Valdez is an American playwright, screenwriter, film director and actor. Regarded as the father of Chicano film and playwriting, Valdez is best known for his play Zoot Suit, his movie La Bamba, and his creation of El Teatro Campesino. A pioneer in the Chicano Movement, Valdez broadened the scope of theatre and arts of the Chicano community.
The Miami Beach Convention Center is a convention center located in Miami Beach, Florida. Originally opened in 1958, the venue was renovated from 2015 to 2018 for $620 million. The re-imagined and enhanced MBCC includes a 60,000-square-foot Grand Ballroom, four junior ballrooms, 500,000 square feet of flexible exhibition space, 84 meeting rooms, and pre-function space, as well as outdoor spaces and terraces.
Gloria Calderón Kellett is an American writer, producer, director and actress.
Geneva State Forest is an Alabama state forest in Geneva County, Alabama in the United States. The forest is 7,120 acres (2,880 ha) and sits at an elevation of 210 feet (64 m). It is Alabama's largest state forest. According to the Alabama Forestry Commission the primary objective of the state forest is to provide timber for the lumber industry and the secondary objectives are to provide habitats for wildlife and recreational opportunities for people. The forest is open for year-round recreation including hunting, fishing, hiking and camping.
Zoe Levin is an American actress. She played Emily in the 2013 film Palo Alto and Tasha in Beneath the Harvest Sky. She portrayed Kara Souders in the Fox TV show Red Band Society. She played Tiffany "Tiff" Chester in the 2019 Netflix dark comedy Bonding. She is also part of the unreleased film The Long Home, directed by James Franco.
The history of forced labor in the United States encompasses to all forms of unfree labor which have occurred within the present day borders of the United States through the modern era. "Unfree labor" is a generic or collective term for those work relations, in which people are employed against their will by the threat of destitution, detention, violence, lawful compulsion, or other extreme hardship to themselves or to members of their families.
Jacob Padrón is the Artistic Director of Long Wharf Theatre. He is also the Artistic Director of The Sol Project and a co-founder of the Artists' Anti-Racism Coalition.
Knabb Turpentine was the name used for the pine resin harvesting and turpentine distilling businesses operated in northeast Florida by the Knabb brothers: Thomas Jefferson, William, and Earl, of Macclenny. Turpentine production boomed in North Florida between the late 1800s and 1920s; in the early 1900s, the Knabb family began to build one of the largest turpentine operations in the United States, and by the mid-20th century owned over 200,000 acres of pine forest in Baker County, over half its area. The eldest brother, T.J. Knabb (1880–1937), was the founder and president of the original Knabb Turpentine company. He made a fortune with the forced labor of jail inmates he leased from Baker, Alachua and Bradford counties, holding the convicts in peonage. Knabb was elected to the Florida Legislature in 1921 and served as a state senator of District 29 during the 1921, 1923, 1929 and 1931 legislative sessions. He was a co-founder of the Citizen's Bank of Macclenny and its vice-president until his death.
J. Augustus Smith, also known as Gus Smith, was an American actor, playwright, and screenwriter. In 1936 he was one of three theatre artists who succeeded John Houseman in leading the Negro Theatre Unit of the Federal Theatre Project in New York City.
Between 1952 and 1954, John Raymond published four digest-size science fiction and fantasy magazines. Raymond was an American publisher of men's magazines who knew little about science fiction, but the field's rapid growth and a distributor's recommendation prompted him to pursue the genre. Raymond consulted and then hired Lester del Rey to edit the first magazine, Space Science Fiction, which appeared in May 1952. Following a second distributor's suggestion that year, Raymond launched Science Fiction Adventures, which del Rey again edited, but under an alias. In 1953, Raymond gave del Rey two more magazines to edit: Rocket Stories, which targeted a younger audience, and Fantasy Magazine, which published fantasy rather than science fiction.
Inchling is a three-act children's fantasy play by American poet, painter, playwright Ira Mallory Remsen. It was performed in the summer of 1922, at the Forest Theater in Carmel-by-the-Sea, California. It was the most popular children's play ever performed at the Forest Theater. It played again in 1928 and 1936 at the same venue. The 1936 revival of Inchling helped overcome an accumulated debt that had taken its toll on the Forest Theater during the Great Depression. The play has been produced by schools and children's theater groups throughout the county, including New York and London.
