Goodman Theatre

For Immediate Release

(Chicago, IL - April 1, 2008) Through countless interviews over the past decade with Emmett Till's family, teachers, classmates and eye-witnesses to the boy's brutal 1955 murder, emerging Chicago playwright Ifa Bayeza has penned a new dramatic work, part history and part mystery: The Ballad of Emmett Till. Oz Scott, who directed for colored girls who have considered suicide when the rainbow is enuf by Bayeza's sister Ntozake Shange, directs this world premiere. Till was developed in Goodman Theatre's 2006 New Stages Series, where it enjoyed a sold-out reading, as well as at The Eugene O'Neill Theater Center's 2007 National Playwrights Conference. The Ballad of Emmett Till runs April 26 - June 1 in the Goodman's Albert Theatre; opening night is May 5. Target is the Major Corporate Sponsor and Lead Diversity Night Sponsor and Katten Muchin Rosenman is the Corporate Sponsor Partner.

"Fifty years later, the tragedy of Emmett Till has lost none of its currency-and has assumed an emotional and political significance of almost mythic proportions," said Artistic Director Robert Falls. "Ifa's new play is an emotionally and theatrically ambitious work in which we examine our own lives and actions through the prism of an epoch-defining moment in history. We produce this stunning new work at the Goodman with considerable pride."

In her script notes, playwright Ifa Bayeza describes Till as written "in the footsteps of an old man; a memory; a mystery; myth; a deconstructed, reconstructed jazz play." Using factual accounts and creative interpolation, Till is based on the brutal1955 Mississippi murder of the 14-year-old Chicagoan Emmett Till for allegedly whistling at a white woman. The decision of his mother, Mamie, to have an open-casket funeral fueled a life-long struggle to force America to confront its legacy of enslavement and Southern terrorism. Emmett's murder-and the national revulsion which followed-is believed by many to have sparked the modern civil rights movement, and remains one of the most pivotal incidents in a monumental era.

"Like many people, I knew the basic blueprint of Emmett's story and was profoundly affected as a youth on the frontlines of racial integration," said Bayeza. "In all of my research for this piece, there was very little to be found about Emmett-I wondered, who was this boy whose summer trip to Mississippi changed the course of an entire nation? There was such a difference between the way Emmett was described by William Bradford Huie in Look magazine-as a sexually aggressive, predatory thug-and the way his mother spoke of him, how he whistled because he stuttered. I thought that there was a real mystery play between those two worlds. Till is based on history, but I am drawn to and am highlighting the mythic and epic elements of this saga."

Production history

Over ten years in the making, The Ballad of Emmett Till began as a one-act and expanded into a full-length play in four movements. Bayeza first presented excerpts of Till at the Arna Bontemps African American Museum in Alexandria, Louisiana, where she was named the 2003 Arna Bontemps Centennial Scholar. In June 2005, Movement One of Till received its first public staged reading at Actors Theatre of Louisville. Directed by Sue Lawless, the play was then presented as part of the Juneteenth Legacy New Plays Festival. In September 2005, Bayeza read Movement One in a solo presentation at the Stillman College conference "The Murder of Emmett Till and the Civil Rights Struggle" in Tuskaloosa, Alabama. Also in September, the Fountain Theatre of Los Angeles hosted a staged reading of Movement One directed by John Wesley-who appears as Moses in the Goodman's production.

Till was then selected by Brown University's Rites and Reason Theatre and Providence Black Repertory Company as the inaugural project for RPM Mainstage-a new play development partnership established through Brown's Office of the President. Bayeza began a six-month residency to develop the full-length Till, culminating in the first staged reading of all four movements at Providence Black Repertory Theatre in March 2006, directed by the late Marsha Z. West. In July 2006, Bayeza directed a reading of Till at New Federal Theatre in New York City and in September, Till was included in Goodman Theatre's New Stages Series, directed by Clinton Turner Davis. In summer 2007, Till was named one of eight plays included in the National Playwrights Conference at The Eugene O'Neill Theater Center in Waterford, Connecticut, where Bayeza spent a month-long residency and the play enjoyed two script-in-hand readings directed by Kate Whoriskey. The Goodman's world premiere production is directed by Oz Scott, a longtime creative colleague of Bayeza, who also directed her sister Ntozake Shange's play for colored girls who have considered suicide when the rainbow is enuf-for which Bayeza served as the dramaturg and set designer at the New Federal Theatre and The Public Theater.

About the 13-Member Cast and Creative Team

Ifa Bayeza is an award-winning playwright, producer and conceptual theater artist. Her works for the stage include Amistad Voices, Club Harlem and Homer G & the Rhapsodies, for which she received a Kennedy Center Fund for New American Plays fellowship. Bayeza is co-founder of DBA Studios, doing business artistically, creating theater-based work to encourage dialogue among races, cultures and people. The company's premiere production, Bayeza's Hip-Hop musical Kid Zero, with music by Harvey Mason, has been seen by over 12,000 public school students in Chicago, St. Louis and New York. She and her sister, Shange, are collaborating on a new novel, Some Sing, Some Cry, which will be published by St. Martin's Press. A graduate of Harvard University, Bayeza is a board member of the SonEdna Literary Foundation, founded by Morgan Freeman and his wife Myrna Colley-Lee, and a member of the Dramatists Guild of America. Director Oz Scott began his directing career with for colored girls who considered suicide when the rainbow is enuf. He has participated in The Eugene O'Neill Playwrights Conference for the past dozen years, and traveled to Russia with The Old Settler for the O'Neill. Throughout the 1980s and early 1990s, Scott's directorial work for television included such popular prime-time shows as The Cosby Show, Northern Exposure, Chicago Hope, Picket Fences, LA Law, Diagnosis Murder, Hill Street Blues, Fame, Dirty Dancing, 227, Scarecrow and Mrs. King, Gimme A Break, Archie Bunker's Place and The Jeffersons. Scott has received an NAACP Image Award, the Drama Desk Award, a Village Voice Obie Award, Genesis Award, and the Nancy Susan Reynolds Award.

Joseph Anthony Byrd, a recent graduate of Carnegie Mellon University, makes his Goodman debut as Emmett "Bo" Till. Byrd's theater credits include The Island and Agamemnon. Deidrie Henry (Mamie Till - Emmett's mother) has appeared in Small Tragedy at Odyssey Theatre, Yellowman at The Fountain Theatre and at Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Crowns at Intiman Theatre, Rosalind in As You Like It with the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Irina in Three Sisters, Susie in Wit, Ophelia in Hamlet and Vera Dotson in Seven Guitars, among others.

John Wesley (Moses Wright - Emmett's great uncle, a sharecropper and former preacher) was the artistic and producing director of the Southern California Black Repertory Company, where he produced a number of plays including Athol Fugard's Sizwe Banzi is Dead and The Island, which toured for three years. As a member of the repertory company at Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland, Wesley performed in Richard II, Coriolanus, Twelfth Night and Two Gentlemen of Verona. Other theater credits include Macbeth and Toys in the Attic at the Old Globe Theater; An American Clock and Wild Oats at Mark Taper Forum; Ma Rainey's Black Bottom at the Geva Theatre Center; a six-month run in Los Angeles of I Am a Man, for which he received a Drama-Logue Award for Best Supporting Actor; Seven Guitars, Jitney, Blues for an Alabama Sky and A Streetcar Named Desire at the Denver Center for the Performing Arts. He has appeared in more than 70 films and television movies. Television credits include Frasier, The Jeffersons, Benson, The Fresh Prince of Bel Air, Martin, The Jamie Foxx Show, JAG, Hill Street Blues, In the Heat of the Night, Revelations, Martin, Always Outnumbered, The Practice, Lyon's Den, Cold Case, All of Us and Medium. Karen Aldridge (Lizabeth Wright - Moses's second wife, Emmett's grandmother's sister) appeared at the Goodman earlier this season in The Cook, directed by Henry Godinez. Other Goodman credits include Proof directed by Chuck Smith. Other Chicago credits include The Seagull at Writers' Theatre, The Man From Nebraska at Steppenwolf Theatre Company, Far Away and In The Blood (Jeff Award nomination for best actress, After Dark Award) at Next Theatre Company and Love's Labours Lost at Chicago Shakespeare Theater. Samuel G. Roberson, Jr. (Simeon - Moses's youngest and favorite son) appeared at The Children's Theatre Company in Bud, Not Buddy; The Lost Boys of Sudan; Antigone; Prom and Sleeping Beauty. He has also been seen at Pillsbury House Theatre, Illusion Theater, Imagination Stage, Source Theatre and The Studio Theatre. He is a recent recipient of a Jerome Foundation Many Voices Fellowship with the Playwrights' Center. Phillip James Brannon (Maurice - Moses's middle son, second oldest by his second wife) has appeared at the Goodman in The Cook, directed by Henry Godinez; Oedipus Complex, adapted and directed by Frank Galati; and A Christmas Carol, directed by William Brown. Other Chicago credits include Titus Andronicus, directed by Charles Newell at Court Theatre; and Elmina's Kitchen, directed by Derrick Sanders at Congo Square Theatre Company. Morocco Omari (Wheeler Parker - Emmett's cousin and best friend from Argo, IL) last appeared at the Goodman in Blues For An Alabama Sky, which was reprised at the Alabama Shakespeare Festival. Other Chicago theater credits include Intimate Apparel and Space at Steppenwolf Theatre Company; Elmina's Kitchen at Congo Square Theatre Company; The Court Martial at Fort Devens and Knock Me a Kiss at Victory Gardens Theater. Nambi E. Kelley (Ruthie May - a neighbor of the Wright's) last appeared at the Goodman in Crumbs from the Table of Joy and Drowning Crow. Other Chicago credits include title roles in Harriet Jacobs and Nikki Giovanni: New Song for a New Day at Steppenwolf. Regional credits include Joe Turner's Come and Gone at Fountain Theatre and Antigone at South Coast Repertory.

Cliff Chamberlain (Roy Bryant - Caroline's husband, store-keeper, part-time trucker, former G.I.) last appeared at the Goodman in Oedipus Complex, directed by Frank Galati. Other Chicago credits include Dolly West's Kitchen at TimeLine Theatre Company; Mr. Christopher in The Sparrow (Non-Equity Jeff Award, Ensemble); Bad Lias in Hatfield and McCoy; the Tin Woodsman in The Great and Terrible Wizard of Oz at The House Theatre of Chicago, among others. Kristina Johnson (Caroline Bryant - Roy's wife, former local beauty queen ) appeared in a New Stages reading at Goodman Theatre, Stephanie/Stephano in Eye of the Storm at Adventure Stage Chicago and Lisa Stansfield/ Private Parts in a staged reading of Golden Boy at Black Ensemble Theater. Chris Sullivan (J.W. Milam - Roy Bryant's half-brother, also a former G.I.) appeared in Defending the Caveman at Lakeshore Theater. He also performed in the national tour of Defending the Caveman for five years. Additional theater credits include The Legend of Alex at the Mark Taper Forum and two seasons with The Meh-Tropolis Dance Theatre, both in Los Angeles.

Kirk Anderson (Attorney J.J. Breeland/Elmer Kimbrell) has appeared in The Diary of Anne Frank, Huck Finn, Lady Madeline, Uncle Vanya and The Duel at Steppenwolf Theatre Company. Other recent credits include Dandelion Wine at Chicago Children's Theatre, Accidental Death of an Anarchist at Next Theatre Company and Mozart and Salieri at TUTA. Brian McCaskill (Hon. Robert B. Smith, Special Prosecutor) has appeared in Suddenly Last Summer, Dealer's Choice and Oscar Rolfe in Judgment at Nuremberg at Shattered Globe Theatre; American Buffalo, The Glass Menagerie, Death of a Salesman and Ricky Roma in Glengarry Glen Ross at Raven Theatre.

The design team for The Ballad of Emmett Till includes Skip Mercier (Set), Myrna Colley-Lee (Costumes), Victor En Yu Tan (Lighting), Richard Woodbury (Sound), Kathryn Bostic (Composer) and John Boesche (Projections).

Tickets to The Ballad of Emmett Till are $20 (Target $20 Sundays) – 55 and may be purchased online at GoodmanTheatre.org, at the Goodman Theatre Box Office, 170 North Dearborn Street, or charged by phoning 312.443.3800. See calendar for specific dates, times and prices. MezzTix are half-price mezzanine tickets available at 6pm for evening shows and 12 noon for matinees at the box office, and at 10am online at GoodmanTheatre.org on the day of performance, subject to availability. Groups of 10 or more, call 312.443.3820. 10Tix are $10 mezzanine tickets for students available for purchase online or in-person at the box office on the day-of performance; 10Tix are not available by telephone. When purchasing on GoodmanTheatre.org, enter the promo code 10TIX. Valid student I.D. must be presented when picking up the tickets at will call. Limit 4 tickets per student with I.D. Tickets are subject to availability and handling fees apply.

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