http:\/\/www.thecharlottepost.com\/index.php?src=news&refno=5150&category=Arts%20and%20Entertainment<\/p>\n
\nArts and Entertainment<\/p>\n
Tribute to Freedom Riders
\n\u2018The Parchman Hour\u2019 dramatizes rights struggle<\/p>\n
Published Wednesday, November 21, 2012 7:27 am
\nby Michaela L. Duckett <\/p>\n
Acclaimed actor and playwright Mike Wiley has spent the last decade of his life working to fulfill his mission of bringing educational theatre to young audiences.<\/p>\n
\nPHOTO\/MIKE WILEY PRODUCTIONS
\nA scene from \u201cThe Parchman Hour,\u201d which tells the story of the 1961 Freedom Riders.<\/p>\n
He will be presenting one of his latest works, \u201cThe Parchman Hour,\u201d at 8 p.m. on Dec. 1 at the Davis Theatre in Concord.<\/p>\n
\n\u201cThe Parchman Hour\u201d tells the story of the Freedom Riders of 1961, an interracial group of civil rights activists who rode interstate buses into the segregated South. The play is named after Parchman Farm, a penitentiary in Mississippi where a group of riders were arrested and imprisoned.<\/p>\n
\n\u201cIt\u2019s one of those old penitentiaries with a farm that you see on TV where they are wearing stripes and the guards are on horses,\u201d says Wiley. \u201cIt was and still is one of the hardest penitentiaries in the country.\u201d<\/p>\n
\nWhile serving time, the Riders would keep their spirits up by singing freedom songs and entertain themselves by creating a fictional radio program, which is the basis for the play.<\/p>\n
\n\u201cEach cell had to contribute a short act,\u201d recalls Freedom Rider Mimi Real, who served time in Parchman. She says the short acts typically consisted of singing a song, telling a joke or reading from the Bible \u2013 the only book the Riders were allowed to read while in prison.<\/p>\n
\n\u201cIn between acts we had commercials for the products we lived with everyday, like the prison soap, the black-and-white striped skirts, or the awful food,\u201d says Real. \u201cWe did this every evening, as I recall. It gave us something to do during the day, thinking up our cell\u2019s act for the evening.\u201d<\/p>\n
\nUsing the race rhetoric and soulful freedom songs of the 1960s, \u201cThe Parchaman Hour\u201d encompasses the variety show theme, oral history and conversations from the Freedom Riders\u2019 most iconic characters including Martin Luther King Jr., Robert Kennedy and Stokely Carmichael.<\/p>\n
\nFor tickets visit www.CabarrusArtsCouncil.org or call (704) 920-2753.<\/p>\n
Comments<\/p>\n
http:\/\/www.thecharlottepost.com\/index.php?src=news&refno=5150&category=Arts%20and%20Entertainment Arts and Entertainment Tribute to Freedom Riders \u2018The Parchman Hour\u2019 dramatizes rights struggle Published Wednesday, November 21, 2012 7:27 am by Michaela L. Duckett Acclaimed actor and playwright Mike Wiley has spent the last decade of his life working to fulfill his mission of bringing educational theatre to young audiences. PHOTO\/MIKE WILEY PRODUCTIONS A […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-959","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ebzb.org\/WPress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/959","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ebzb.org\/WPress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ebzb.org\/WPress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ebzb.org\/WPress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ebzb.org\/WPress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=959"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ebzb.org\/WPress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/959\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ebzb.org\/WPress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=959"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ebzb.org\/WPress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=959"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ebzb.org\/WPress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=959"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}