Night Blooms opens at ArtsRevive
Published 2:32 pm Monday, March 30, 2015
Kennesaw State University student Skylar Jackson reads the part of Raynelle, the daughter of fictional Selma housekeeper Geneva Willis, in Margaret Baldwin’s “Night Blooms.”
The ArtsRevive Carneal Building was transported back to 1965 for a Saturday night dramatic reading of Margaret Baldwin’s “Night Blooms.”
The drama is influenced by the relationship between Baldwin’s grandmother, Ruth Shuptrine, and her housekeeper and eventual nurse, Matilda Martin.
“The bond between these two women was complex and contradictory, but also full of live, humor and grace,” Baldwin wrote in the play’s program.
Baldwin had the idea for the play mulling around in her mind for years. It centered on a family anecdote about how her grandmother and Martin loaded up into the family’s Lincoln Continental to watch the Martin Luther King Jr.-led march of March 21, 1965.
“The play started as a story I always heard growing up — the story of the big march,” Baldwin said.
The playwright came to Selma in 2004 to speak with Martin about the tale she had heard her entire life.
“She said, ‘Well, it never happened,’” Baldwin explained Saturday during a Q&A after the reading.
Actor Tom Thon and playwright Margaret Baldwin speak about “Night Blooms” during a question and answer segment after Saturday’s reading.
After some initial debate about what to do, she chose to still write a play but go in a different direction.
“Some of the stories are fact, while others turned out to be fiction,” Baldwin said.
“Night Blooms” does tell the story of two Selma families, a three-generation middle class white family and their black housekeeper and her daughter, on the same day of the first leg of the Montgomery march.
“It’s a play about how families face and live through change, and how change compels us to see the world with different eyes,” Baldwin said. “In my own works, I really love the gray areas, and I think that is where most of us live.”
Students and faculty from Kennesaw State University, where Baldwin teaches, read the play.
Before Saturday’s performance, the cast was able to tour Selma and learn more about its history.
“Just being able to put my foot where theirs might have been gives you a new perspective than what a film or book can,” said student James G. Smith, who served as the play’s narrator.
The Kennesaw students spoke about learning more about the sacrifices made in Selma and how to honor those today.
“If we don’t take the lessons of what happened here, it’s meaningless,” said Skylar Jackson, who played the housekeeper’s daughter Raynelle.
“Night Blooms” won the 2011 Gene Gabriel Moore Playwriting Award for best new play by an Atlanta playwright and has had staged readings throughout the United States and in Germany. The play had its world premiere at Atlanta’s Horizon Theatre in 2012.
Saturday night’s performance was funded in part through a grant from the Alabama State Council on the Arts.
