Based on a True Story
I think I’ve mentioned before that Follow Me to Nellie’s is based (loosely) on the life of the playwright’s relative, Nellie Jackson, who ran a house of ill repute in Natchez, Mississippi. A quick online search yields interesting results – scandalous rumors, X-rated memoirs, and even Follow Me to Nellie’s T-Shirts.
And, I suspect there’s a lot more information out there, if you know who to talk to. Clare spent some time trying to find information on a baseball team that’s referenced in the play, and she called some very friendly Mississippians for help. When she explained why she was looking for the information, it seemed like everyone was familiar with Nellie. Many were eager to tell their own Nellie Jackson story – including one of Natchez’s former mayors. I’ll leave it to Clare to tell the story, when she has a free moment.
In the meantime, here is an excerpt from Nellie Jackson’s obituary:
“If you wanted a girl at Nellie Jackson’s place, you arrived before midnight and you arrived sober.
They were simple rules, but effective ones. For the better part of 60 years they had helped Nellie Jackson stay in business as the best-known madam in this Mississippi River town.
For that long, the city fathers – police chiefs, mayors, aldermen – had turned a blind eye to the goings on in the nondescript frame house with the red striped awnings on North Rankin Street.
In that time, Nellie Jackson, with her heart of gold, bug white Lincoln and small French poodles, became arguably the most colorful and best known person in town, loved by mayors and doctors, saloon owners and neighbors.
Last week, at age 87, they laid Nellie Jackson to rest. They laid her to rest because a 20-year-old kid would not play by the rules…”
Voting Rights – Then & Now
One of the central themes of Follow Me to Nellie’s by Dominique Morisseau is the disenfranchisement of African Americans. The play takes place in 1955 in Natchez, Mississippi. The central character, Madame Nellie Jackson, lived on a tightrope – running her business (and keeping her home) required tremendous diplomacy and finesse, so when Ossie, a young voting rights activist, needs a place to stay, she is reluctant to risk her livelihood.
Premiere Stages staff and interns have been researching the history of Natchez, and what Mississippi was like in 1955. Information is compiled and the actors are given a packet, a quick guide to the culture in which the characters of the play live. I’ve always been interested in the women’s suffrage movement, and even wrote a paper about the 19th Amendment in college, but I was surprised by how much I didn’t know about the “unofficial” disenfranchisement of African Americans.
Here is a quick quote from one of the items included in the packet:
Mississippi adopted a disenfranchising constitution in 1890. The state then proceeded to systematically purge blacks from the voter rolls through new requirements of poll taxes and literacy tests, as well as through old standby methods of intimidation and fraud… Until the enactment of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, no more than 12 percent of [Adam's] County’s black voting-age population would find their names in the poll books.
– Race Against Time: Culture & Separation in Natchez Since 1930 by Jack E. Davis
The racist political climate of 1955 Mississippi is hard for me to imagine. I can’t fathom what it would have been like to live under segregation and Jim Crow. It has been fascinating to research a way of life so radically different from my own. It has also inspired me to research modern controversies in voting. I found this remarkable information on the American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey website:
- At least 4.7 million Americans cannot vote because of felony convictions.
- 13 percent of African-American men are barred from voting forever because of felony convictions. In the South, 30 percent of black men cannot vote.
Sad, but true.
Premiere Stages wanted everyone who attends a performance of Follow Me to Nellie’s to have the opportunity to register to vote. To that end, volunteers from the League of Women Voters of New Jersey will be in the lobby half an hour before the performance with materials and information.
It’s easy to take the right to vote for granted, or to think that one vote matters. But when you consider the sacrifices that were made on behalf of the disenfranchised, and the battles still being fought for universal suffrage, voting takes on a new significance.
Finally, I’ll leave you with this quote from the script. Nellie has just refused to give Ossie a place to stay, and this is how he responds.
OSSIE:
I understand, Madam. I do. I know that everyone will have a part to play in this movement that is coming. Even something as simple as an invitation in… it’s action. But you’re right, ma’am. Action means danger. And I don’t want to cause any of that for you or your… girls. I just know that it has to be done. And if that means sleeping in the yard, or going sleepless, I know it will be worth it.
–Follow Me to Nellie’s by Dominique Morisseau
What makes you see a show?
I’d like to do a little informal research, if I might. I have a question for anyone who might happen to be reading this. How do you decide whether or not to see a play? Particularly a new play. If you aren’t familiar with the show, the writer, the director, or anyone in the cast or crew, what will make you decide to see one show instead of a dozen other options?
What are the factors you consider? Ticket prices? The reputation of the theatre? Do you only see a show if it’s received a good review? How much information do you need, and where do you go to find it?
Personally, I try to see everything that my friends direct or act in, and that fills my calendar pretty quickly. I’ve been “brand loyal” to a few theatres in my life (particularly KNOW Theatre in Binghamton, New York – they do amazing work). I belonged to several theatre’s e-mail lists. I’d glance through and if something sounded interesting, I’d look at the dates and prices and see if I could talk someone into going with me.
What “sounds interesting” to one person might not be the same for someone else. My personal bias is for straight plays (not musicals), dramas and dark comedies, female-dominated casts, female playwrights and directors, sex-drugs-and-rock-n’-roll subject matter, and cheap tickets – under $20 a person. A play doesn’t have to have all these things, or even any of these things, for me to want to go to see it, but a lot of my favorite plays share these elements.
So, please, leave a comment and tell us – when it comes to new plays, what gets your attention?
An Exciting New Season – and we’re not just saying that
People toss around a lot of subjective descriptors when they’re working in marketing. They use adjectives like “interesting” and “incredible” and “inspiring” – and “in-demand”! When it’s your job to sell something, you’ll sometimes say things you don’t mean.
I should know. I’m Kellie Powell, and I’ve been working in theatre publicity for over two years professionally and for about ten years independently. And I’m this summer’s Marketing and Box Office Intern. And I have to tell you: Working at Premiere Stages, when I use those words, I mean them.
Here are a few of the highlights, the things that I’m most excited about:
- Full houses for staged readings of Egyptian Song by James Christy. No joke, we had to start a waiting list for Sunday’s performance. As much as I hated to have to tell people, “I’m sorry, I can’t guarantee you a seat for today’s performance,” I loved the way I finished that sentence: “because so many people wanted to see the readings that we’re at maximum capacity.” (Damn those fire codes.) I finally got to see the performance by sitting on the steps of the lighting and sound booth – it was not the most comfortable seat in the house and I was aching by the end of the show. But it was totally worth it. The actors did a fine job, and the story is quite poignant. James Christy made my list of Playwrights To Watch. If you missed the show, you can check out these photos on Premiere’s facebook page. And next time you have a chance to see Egyptian Song, do it.
- The winner of the 2011 Premiere Play Festival, Follow Me to Nellie’s by Dominique Morisseau. The production runs July 14-31, and personally, I can’t wait. I’m hoping to describe the new play development process in several entries between now and opening night, but I’ll just tell you this for now: It’s going to be awesome. People in the audience are going to cry. The script is incredible, the actors are super-mega-talented, and if you can see it, you should see it. I’m not in the position to offer a money-back-guarantee, but that’s approximately how confident I feel that if you have a heartbeat, you will love this show. If the fact that the show is set in a brothel in 1955 in Mississippi somehow doesn’t pique your interests, be assured: this is a play that has something for everyone.
- A beautiful story of a woman who sacrificed to make the world a better place: Hannah by John Wooten is based on the true story of Hannah Senesh. I had never heard of her before I read the script, but she’s quite a role model. The play takes place in a jail cell during World War II, with flashback scenes of Hannah’s mission to evacuate Jewish people from Hungary and her capture at the border. She was a poet-turned-soldier, and she is remembered as much for her writing as she is for her tragic death. My internship will have ended by the time this play opens on September 1, but I will be helping Premiere Stages market the event, and hopefully I can write more about it when rehearsals begin.
- Bringing in student groups and new patrons, and getting people to wake up and realize how awesome live theatre is.
- Outreach to voting organizations, women’s empowerment groups, civil rights advocates, jazz and blues enthusiasts, other theatre companies in New Jersey and NYC, and anyone else I can think of between now and August 5.
- Two camps, one for middle school students and one for high school students, which were so in-demand that I didn’t even have to publicize them. I arrived, and they were already fully booked. (I’ll admit, part of the reason I’m excited about this is because I found out that one of the students last year chose a piece I wrote for their monologue project!)
- Working with, and learning from, a group of people who are as excited about theatre as I am. I’ve been working with Clare, Amber, two of the other interns Robyn and Kate, with the Producing Artistic Director, John Wooten, and Paul, the Audience Services Coordinator. Plus, since I’m living in the provided free housing on the lovely Kean University campus, I live with three production interns, Rachel, Mara, and Hannah. Hopefully I’ll have time to introduce each of the interns to you, but in the meantime, you can check out some pictures from our field trip to New York City.
So, you’re probably asking yourself – how do I know that you are serious about this theatre being awesome? How do I know that you’re not just an employee trying to create good buzz for a theatre that is paying you to do that? This is my evidence: I went from being a Marketing Manager upstate to being an intern. I won’t get in to details, but I will say, I’m definitely not doing it for the money. At 27 years old, you don’t sign up for an internship so that you can work with a group you don’t believe in. At least, I didn’t.
And we’re back
Ah faithful blog readers, we have been amiss in our writing. You might have noticed that the playblog has lain dormant for these past few months. And you would be quite correct in reprimanding your errant blog hosts. But never fear! We are back and better than ever!
The past months (though woefully lacking in blogtasticness) have been filled with behind-the-scenes goings-on at Premiere as we prepared for our 2011 Season. We kicked off 2011 with our staged reading of Egyptian Song by James Christy and have just begun rehearsals for our Play Festival Winner Follow Me to Nellie’s by Dominique Morisseau. We are beyond excited for the season and promise to fill the playblog with backstage details and an in depth look at our season shows and the process of bringing a new play from page to stage!
Five Questions for Follow Me to Nellie’s author Dominique Morisseau
1. How did you get your start as a playwright?
Funny thing is, I’ve been a writer since 2nd grade (it all began with what I titled, “The Cabbage Patch Kid Mysteries”- but that’s a story for another time. Ask me about it and I’ll tell you more. lol), but playwriting didn’t come until college. I was studying Acting in the Theatre Department at the University of Michigan, and I was feeling unhappy with the lack of diversity in casting. So I decided to write a play that was to star myself and the other two actresses-of-color in the department at the time. Because the play was the first Black play produced in the Student Theatre for as far back as any of us knew, it quickly became a big event, and brought out a surge of Black students from all fields of study to the Theatre Department. It sparked a huge movement of support from the student body. I began to recognize the urgency in challenging the theatre to represent more under-heard voices. Playwriting became an important calling for me….
2. Can you tell me a little about your writing process–what is new play development like for you?
New play development is about community to me. I treat a play like a child, and the development process is like raising your child in the right community. I truly adore the collaborative process of theatre. It’s frightening and exciting. Usually, I begin writing with an idea or a concept that I want to explore. Almost all of my work is inspired by music. I listen to the music of the time period that I’m writing in, and it helps to inform me of the culture and the language of the time. Then when I’ve completed a draft, I invite my closest and most trusted peeps around a table or around my living room floor, and we hear the baby out loud and discuss. From there, I share the script with trusted mentors and dramaturgs, and seek readings with companies that will help to foster the play and move its development further.
3. What inspired Follow Me to Nellie’s and what are you looking forward to hearing in the reading?
Follow Me To Nellie’s was inspired by my Aunt Nellie Jackson, who was a Madame in Mississippi, and who-during the Civil Rights Movement, would assist the activists with brothel money. I knew her well, and she did many things for many people, but this aspect of her life was one I never knew about and was intrigued by. During the time when Obama was running for President, I was particulary struck with various people’s attitudes about voting and race. I am proud of the progress we’ve shown throughout history, but also concerned with the things that we have not yet healed from or fully confronted. So, I wanted to re-imagine my Aunt’s world within the context of Voting Rights activism, and pay homage to the people at all levels – big and small, who have sacrificed their lives for our right to do something that we often take for granted. I also wanted to recognize that even the most questionable of our society still have the power and the spirit to contribute something beautiful to our social progress.
4. What’s next for you?
I am developing a three-play cycle on my hometown of Detroit, called “The Detroit Projects” which looks at three iconic periods in Detroit’s history: the 1949 jazz hubs at the dawn of urban renewal, the 1967 riots, and the present day foreclosure crisis. DETROIT 67 is my piece on the riots, and is currently being developed in the Emerging Writers Group at the Public Theater. The other two pieces are in early stages of research. The final piece is also being developed with Vicious Bear Theater Company’s Inaugural Development project called “Hometown”. I am very excited to explore this cycle, and hope that it sheds some necessary insight on the often mis-understood Detroit:)
Follow Me to Nellie’s by Dominique Morisseau will be performed July 14-31, 2011 at the Zella Fry Theatre. For more information, visit Premiere Stages.
Five Questions for Egyptian Song author James Christy
1. How did you get your start as a playwright?
My father is a theatre professor and director so I grew up around the theatre. I did some acting in when I was younger (including a particularly embarrassing small role in Dead Poets Society). But it wasn’t until I was in my late 20s before I started writing plays. My sister was in an acting class and looking for an original scene. She told me to write her a play. I generally do as my sister says. It was a fun process and the piece ended up winning a national 10-minute play contest. So I stayed with it.
2. Can you tell me a little about your writing process–what is new play development like for you?
It’s different each time. I don’t sit down and say, I think I’m going to write my next play. Generally it starts with a character or a conversation or something weirdly specific that stays with me. I doodle notes, very informally at first. I’m borderline superstitious about ruining an idea by talking about it to anyone. I don’t even admit to myself that I’m really working on a play at first. I just keep taking notes in random places (I often use the “drafts” in my email client) and eventually (hopefully) the notes turn into something more concrete. Sometimes a scene, sometimes a fragmented outline of a story. My process is a mess, basically.
PS: This question also comes up in a video my wife made starring my family and my brother in law’s pug as David Mamet. I was missing my family while away for a play development conference (and fearing the audience talkbacks…).
http://www.thankyoulove.com/talkback/
3. What inspired Egyptian Song and what are you looking forward to hearing in the reading?
I can’t point my finger at one thing that inspired Egyptian Song. My best friend growing up was from Lebanon, so I grew up around this house that had a middle eastern influence. Eventually I read about the singer Omm Kulthum, and I was fascinated with the idea of a female figure that loomed so large in a culture in which men hold most of the external power. I read more about her childhood and this story emerged, not about her life at all, but about a young girl with a similar gift whose life goes in another direction. I’m looking forward to seeing how actors respond to these characters, how audiences respond to the story. This will be the first time hearing this piece out loud so I think I’ll learn a lot.
4. What’s next for you?
I’m actually focused on trying to make a film of my last play LOVE AND COMMUNICATION, which was produced by Passage Theatre this past fall. It’s a personal story about a family raising a child with autism (my oldest son is on the spectrum). If anyone wants to know more about the project (or knows anyone in the film business!) feel free to be in touch. I’m also making notes about another play. But I’m not talking about that yet….
Five Questions for Transit author Kait Kerrigan
1. How did you get your start as a playwright?
The first play I wrote was a collaborative project that I created with 7 actresses at Columbia University. I was a junior and some friends of mine got a grant to put together an all-female show. I created the concept, ran a series of writing workshops, and oversaw writing the show and then once we landed on a script, I directed the piece. To this day, I don’t know what possessed me to think it was a good idea but it changed my life. I’ve been writing plays and musicals ever since.
2. Can you tell me a little about your writing process–what is new play development like for you?
I don’t feel like I have anything at all until I have a first draft. Once I’ve reached the end, I can see what it was I was trying to do and that’s where the real writing begins for me. I’m an avid rewriter – so much so that I almost never show a first draft of a script to anyone. It’s far too messy and confusing. Once I have a second draft, I generally feel like I have something solid and I understand what the story is and then I get to start having fun. I do my best work once I’m listening to and reacting to the actors in the room. I love to sit quietly in the corner and listen to the actors and director work through the script. Sometimes they don’t totally follow a scene that I’d thought I’d made clear. I go home and I rewrite with their problems in mind. A lot of times, this is where the most exciting changes come from.
3. What inspired Transit and what are you looking forward to hearing in the reading?
Most of the time, my plays come from a question that I can’t get out of my head. In this case, I found myself thinking a lot about faith. Certainly, faith is addressed most obviously in Zayda, who is thought to be a suicide bomber – what kind of faith in the afterlife or in religion must someone have to do something like that? But if you look beyond that obvious example, there are more ripples of that same question. Some people have faith in their god, yes, but others put their faith in love or their intellect or their sanity, but it’s all a kind of faith – that our existence is what we believe it to be. I started to think about when you start to lose your grasp on that and that feeling of unmooring. That’s the one thing that everyone in Transit experiences.
In the past year, I did two major rewrites on the play and I got the play to a point where I feel ready to put the play on its feet and really see how the scenes work when actors really have a chance to inhabit the characters. In the meantime, I’m excited to have an opportunity to try a few new additions that I’d considered but hadn’t had the luxury of time to try.
4. What’s next for you?
2011 is a happily hectic year. My writing partner Brian and I are finishing up a concert tour of the the northeast in the next couple weeks. Afterwards, I head out to the MacDowell Colony for two weeks in April to work on a new musical, then to the SF Bay area to work on a production of my new play Imaginary Love in May,and then I’m headwriting a collaborative La Ronde project with Theatreworks in Palo Alto. After that, my musical The Unauthorized Autobiography of Samantha Brown is slated for production at Goodspeed’s Norma Terris Theatre in August. Then maybe a good long nap.
For more on Kait and her latest projects check out her website: www.kerrigan-lowdermilk.com.
Five Questions for Floodplains author Gabe McKinley
1. How did you get your start as a playwright?
Like a lot of folks I started in the theater as an actor, and have been fortunate to scratch out a living as one for the last few years. I graduated from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts as an actor, where I studied the Meisner technique and Shakespeare, both of which would later influence my writing greatly. After that, I spent many years working in the smallest and dirtiest black box theaters in lower manhattan, all the while writing in my free time and producing little shows here and there. Eventually, like most actors turned writers, I was sitting watching a terrible play and said to myself, “I can do better than this.” After a few fledgling works…I decided to study playwriting properly and got my MFA from The New School of Drama, where I studied with a group of amazing playwrights. That program instilled in me a writer’s discipline and allowed me to develop my voice in a great environment.
2. Can you tell me a little about your writing process–what is new play development like for you?
I tend to get inspired by an idea or group of characters and knock out a draft pretty quickly… then the real work begins. After the first draft it is a real bloodletting. Coming from an acting background, I really believe in the collaborative aspect of theater, and a room full of skilled actors is invaluable. I firmly believe in readings, and developing the work after hearing it over and over… then go back to my play and simply trying to write one true thing after another.
3. What inspired Floodplains and what are you looking forward to hearing in the reading?
I was reading an article about a young soldier who had deserted before being deployed to Iraq. I found this soldier’s very real fear of death to be extremely powerful. I started with that fear and these characters started to flow out of me. I am very much looking forward to the reading. This play despite all its bells and whistles is a family play, and as such I’m really going to be paying attention to the relationships and dynamics in this family… are they clear? Are they true? I’ve made some changes to the script that I’ll be anxious to hear.
4. What’s next for you?
Writing writing writing. I’ve been hired to write a movie this spring, among other things.. Otherwise, I have a new play titled CQ/CX that is being read by theaters and I am hoping for a production in not too distant future.
