Festival is turning heads:
Work launched there 3 years ago gaining attention
By Judith Eggerton,
The Courier-Journal
This summer marks the ninth year of the Juneteenth Jamboree of New Plays in Louisville.
The festival continues to grow in local and national importance as it nurtures the development of works about the African-American experience.
Three years ago the Jamboree inspired Ifa Bayeza to transform her one-act drama, "Till," into a folk epic called "The Ballad of Emmett Till," which is now drawing full houses at Chicago's prestigious Goodman Theatre.
This year's Jamboree, presented by the Juneteenth Legacy Theatre, founded by theater director Lorna Littleway, celebrates the life work of playwright August Wilson, who died in 2005. It also offers acting workshops, a talent show and readings of seven other plays.
The Jamboree was "a great launching pad for me to begin writing the full play. It was tremendously helpful," said Bayeza (whose name is pronounced E-Fah By-A-Zah).
After the Juneteenth Jamboree reading of "Till" under the direction of Sue Lawless, Bayeza, a Harvard University graduate and Chicago resident, worked on the play during a fellowship at Brown University. Her first draft of the expanded, two-act play was given a staged reading at the Goodman Theatre, which then offered her a full production.
Bayeza's play tells the story of Emmett Till, a Chicago teenager whose brutal 1955 murder in Mississippi galvanized the civil-rights movement.
"The reading at the Juneteenth Festival at the time of the 50th anniversary of Emmett Till's death was the first public reading with actors," said Bayeza. "It got recognized as something of interest. And when I saw the reaction of the audience, I was really kind of floored by the awe and enthusiasm they had for the work."
Inspired by the audience's response and by Lawless, who praised the musicality of the script, the playwright devoted herself to reworking the play with music as a stronger motif.
Her next goal is to see "The Ballad of Emmett Till" produced at other regional theaters and in New York.
The Goodman Theatre's literary manager, Tanya Palmer, expects the play will have a life beyond the Goodman. Several theaters have shown interest in the play, despite the fact that it's an ambitious production with a cast of 13.
Through Bayeza's play, the character of Emmett Till comes to life and what happens to him is transformative, said Palmer, who previously worked as the literary manager at Actors Theatre of Louisville.
"People do fall in love with this character," Bayeza said. "They see him as a living person, and the tragedy of his death and the injustice of his death is even more profoundly felt."
Some day Bayeza hopes to return to Juneteenth Jamboree with another new work for a staged reading. In the meantime, the Juneteenth Legacy Theatre has the right to claim that it served as a gentle midwife to the successful birth of Bayeza's full-length play.
Reporter Judith Egerton can be reached at (502) 582-4503.
On the Web
For a 2005 Courier-Journal story about Ifa Bayeza and the process of taking a play from page to stage, go to www.courier-journal.com
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