JONATHAN POPP
Donald Dexter, left, plays Henry, and Theola Carter plays Wiletta Mayer in the drama first produced in 1955.
When Alice Childress’ first full-length drama, Trouble in Mind, was first produced in 1955, it ran for 91 performances. Afterward, Childress became the first black woman to win an Obie Award for the play, which was inspired by her own experiences as an actor.
As part of the Black Arts Matter Festival, the UW-Madison’s Department of Afro-American Studies and the Kathie Rasmussen Women’s Theatre (KRASS) will present a revival of Trouble in Mind at the Bartell Theatre from Feb. 22-March 9. “The story resonates for today’s audiences since representation of African Americans continues to be problematic,” says the show’s director, Sandra Adell, a UW professor in Afro-American studies. “I am confident this collaboration will lead to meaningful discussions about race long after the curtain comes down.”
Adell adds that she was attracted to the show’s “unflinching critique of the way African Americans were being portrayed by white writers in theater and film, and the fact that it was written by an African American woman who had become all but a footnote in the annals of American theater history.”
Trouble in Mind follows an integrated cast behind the scenes during rehearsals for a Southern melodrama destined for Broadway. The play-within-a-play is written and directed by a white production team, and it’s filled with stereotypes that are deeply offensive to the actors of color.
“I’ve been trying to get Trouble in Mind produced in Madison for several years,” Adell says. After attending a KRASS production of Dominique Morisseau’s play Detroit ‘67, which featured an all-black cast, she contacted the company’s artistic director, Jan Levine Thal. The two developed a partnership that began with a reading of the play for students in Adell’s course on African American dramatic literature at UW-Madison last spring.
The production also features the talents of internationally acclaimed lighting designer Kathy A. Perkins, the UW theater department’s Lorraine Hansberry artist-in-residence for 2019. Perkins is also a theater historian and author who has edited several anthologies on black female playwrights and edited Alice Childress: Selected Plays.
Levine Thal and Adell are both pleased to be connecting campus and community with the co-production. “This kind of collaboration between the university and a community-based organization exemplifies the Wisconsin Idea,” Adell says, adding that “education should influence people’s lives beyond the boundaries of the classroom.”
