Artistic Director’s Notes:

1968 was an interesting year. To say the least. Assassinations of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in
April, Robert F. Kennedy in June, the subsequent summer of rioting and the climatic clampdown
on progressive protestors outside the Democratic Convention in Chicago by the DINO, Mayor Richard Daley in August. It was truly a long hot summer. Hard on the heels of that unparalleled brutality directed entirely toward progressives (no one on the right or in the center caught a bullet or a baton that I know of), a young black man from Richmond, Virginia, arguably the “capital of the Confederacy” a scant century before, stepped onto the tennis court at Flushing Meadows,
New York and defeated, ironically, a Dutch tennis star, Tom Okker, to become the first Black man to win a ‘major’ in the history of the sport. A generation earlier, a black woman, also a citizen of the United States, Althea Gibson, had won not one but three major singles titles, so he was not the first African American to claim such a title, but for Ashe to have done what he did in
the late summer of 1968, of all years, strikes me as a sign that this was no ordinary man. Who among us would have been able to rise to such an occasion? Which of us would not have shrunk before glaring lights of the media and a rolling public that was, daily, seeing violence spilling
into the streets as the nation’s centuries old racial prejudices were brought to a head and the chasm between the haves and the have-notes was being made brutally clear on the killing fields of Vietnam. Yet there Ashe stood, his only weapon a tennis racket, his only commentary an icy
resolve to not lower himself into the depraved din. It was something his widower father had instilled in him and something that he would carry with him throughout his life, even into a most untimely and unnecessary death, the result of a tainted blood transfusion, just 25 years later as the AIDS epidemic was moving like a scythe through the nation and the world.

Shortly after his success at the US Open,  Ashe applied to (and was denied) a visa to play in the South African Open, a non-major but a tournament highly regarded within the media and tennis circles. Three times he was denied a visa, but in the summer of 1973m the Afrikaner
government, largely of Dutch ancestry, abruptly relented ad allowed Ashe to participate. The boycott of South Africa was by then in full stride and many suggested to Ashe that he should join the boycott, that the Apartheid-based government there had decided that it would be politically advantageous to show the world the image of a renowned black man coming to their country without incident. Much pressure was placed on Ashe to withdraw his application. He went
anyway, based on his belief that it would be useful for the black South African people to see him up close, to believe that achievement was possible, that hope for a better world could be held.

I don’t know which of those ideas was the more moral, but I do know that I’m very glad that the person making the choice was a man named Arthur Ashe. Was he perfect? No. We have a
tendency to beautify celebrities. If they got one thing right, then they must be seen to have gotten
everything right, or we lose faith in them. Ashe wasn’t able to live up to that impossible standard. None of us can. But it does not lessen the importance of his achievements, foremost
among which I would suggest was his will to maintain civility in all situations. We coil use more of that in our public figures. Much more. And in the summer of 1968, when leaders were in very
short supply, and those who did stand up were getting shot down in our streets, a man named
Arthur Ashe walked onto the court and fought and won with dignity, passion and resole.

I don’t know the answer to that, of course, but I do know that I seriously began to consider that question for the first time in my life that night. 

Out in the streets right now there are a lot of people asking that question of themselves and their neighbors. From the Arab Spring to the Occupy movement we are seeing ordinary people the world over, the quiet ones who for generations have been happy to make it through the day unnoticed, spilling into the streets. In the U.S. at least, violence has been minimal, thankfully, yet the windmills…er, I mean the powers that be…have strenuously insisted that the Occupiers have no purpose. Cervantes’ notion, I think, was that through an act of human will, of creative imagination, one might re-mold the world into something better. It seems to me much of the same idea that we’ve seen in the Occupy movement. Now that is a Quixotic idea if ever there was one. Gandhi had such an idea. So did Mandela. In each case, their Quixotic ideas have proven not just possible but the only way forward. There is no doubt in my mind that will ultimately prove to be the case again. 

In fact, the past century has been a century full of Quixotic ideas. The humans could take flight. That the human voice might be recorded, and kept for posterity. That illnesses and disease might be wiped from the face of the earth. In America, we have raised up a middle class of such power, such wealth that all the world stands back in wonder. Labor unions rose, workers’ rights were fought for and achieved, women and minority populations have striven for and received something approaching equal rights, advanced education was extended to a wide swath of the population. In the early 70s we bought a corrupt President to resign, and ended a brutal war by marching in the street, by putting flowers in our hair. 

Jerome Davis 

Crew: 

Choreography: Avis Hatcherpuzzo

Stage Manager: Garbeille Abrams

Technical Director: Greg Osbeck

Props: Elizabeth Newton

Lighting and Scenery Design: Matthew Adelson

Costume Design: Amani McKenzie

Sound Design: Juan Isler and David Ranii

Graphics Design and Social Media: Madison Doss

Study Guide: Eric Kildow

Asst. Director: Alex Procknow

Asst. Stage Manager: John Capetanos, Hannah Lafko, Alyssa Petrone, Courntney Pisano, George
Schlosser

Master Electrician: Mia Carson

House Manage: Carry Vaughan

Dialect Coach: Rebecca Bossen

Scenic Artist: Meredith Riggan

Board Operator: Lee Huddleston

Asst. Scenic Artist: Cole Train

Cast:

Preston Campbell – Man of Color 1, Boy On The Street (a boy of Soweto), Member of the white

Aristocracy, Zulu Warrior, Ron Karenga (an African American activist), Bob Foster (a light heavy weight boxer), Policeman 2

Maxine Eloi – Woman of Color 1, Amahle (an African woman with a London accent), Zulu
Welcome Woman 1 (a woman of Soweto), Pupil 1(a White South African man), Zulu warrior
(Male), Woman (a woman of Soweto), Policeman 1 (white male)

Juan Isler – Man of Color 2, Johnson (an African tennis official), Zulu Warrior, Pilot

Jackie Markahm – Woman of Color 3, Althea Gibson, Zulu Welcome Woman 3, Zulu Warrior (male), White South African Woman (at Stellenbosch), African Student (at UCLA), Chief of Police (White Male)

Joel Oramas – Arthur Ashe

Natalia Soto – Woman of Color 2, Journalist (a female student of the University of Soweto), Zulu
Welcome Woman 2, Pupil 2 (a White South African man), Zulu Warrior (Male)

Steven Roten – Frank Defrd, Hanekom

Beltline to Broadway Review

Cultural Voice of North Carolina Review

INDY Review

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