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Mission: Document black history through history makers.
More specifically, telling the story through the life of its lesser-known history-maker.
This is where the task gets a little blurry in Judi Ann Mason’s “The Drum,” produced by UpStage Theatre. The play opened Saturday with four performances at the theater at 1713 Wooddale Drive.
UpStage’s founding artistic director, Ava Brewster Turner, called the story a celebration of black theatre, poetry, music and dance. Why? Because once students have fully understood all of this, they will incorporate all of this into their assignments.
“It was a group assignment with four students,” Turner said. “Initially, they’ll take shortcuts by focusing on black historical figures like Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks. But that’s not what the professors want them to do.”
The professor, played by Gardner Clarke, doesn’t downplay the heroism of King, Parks, and those who have achieved so much in black history. However, he said there were plenty of others who didn’t make history’s headlines.
They learned that some of these obscure history makers had direct ties to students.
“They started doing research and they learned that their names were the same as some of these history makers,” Turner said.
For example, Miesha Hall, who played Bessie, learned that she was named after Bessie Coleman, the first female pilot of African American descent.
“Bessie was a straight-A student, and she was actually the one who brought up big names in black history when she was assigned the task,” Hall said. “She wasn’t looking for the easy way out, she was looking for the way she knew she could get an A.”
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