How do we create spaces that are freeing and not damaging?: Performing Dreaming Emmett

Abstract

How do we create spaces that are freeing and not damaging?: Performing Dreaming Emmett Daniel Banks, DNAWORKS, Toni Morrison, Stacie McCormick, and Rhaisa Williams Toni Morrison’s play Dreaming Emmett premiered at Capital Repertory Company in Albany, NY on January 4, 1986, produced to commemorate the first nationwide celebration of Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday. The drama engages Emmett Till, a young black boy who was tragically murdered in Mississippi in the summer of 1955 for purportedly whistling at a white woman and whose death remains etched in public memory because of its devastating violence. After its one-month performance run, the play closed and Morrison denied access to any script or video of the production. Christopher Metress writes in 2003, “Dreaming Emmett received mixed reviews, but this alone does not account for Morrison’s unwillingness to make a script or video available. Perhaps one day she will change her mind. Until then, one resists the temptation to speculate” (106). Morrison indeed changed her mind and, through her agent, granted permission to Daniel Banks of DNAWORKS, an arts and service organization currently based in Fort Worth, TX, to work with Dreaming Emmett. [End Page 687] About DNAWORKS: “Founded in 2006 by Daniel Banks, Ph.D. and Adam McKinney, M.A., DNAWORKS is an arts and service organization dedicated to furthering artistic expression and dialogue, focusing on issues of identity, culture, class, and heritage. DNAWORKS applies its award-winning arts process to develop and create dance, theater, and film to promote dialogue-based social justice action and community building with academic institutions and community organizations across the U.S. and in fifteen countries. DNAWORKS believes art = ritual = healing = community and that this philosophy and practice lead to a more peaceful and understanding world.” (dnaworks.org) Daniel Banks obtained one of the few copies of the script of the play and sought permission from Morrison to bring this play back into public view. At Morrison’s approval, Daniel Banks and DNAWORKS have been engaged in workshopping the play and sharing performances of it with limited audiences, of which we were fortunate to have been a part. In our conversation, we cover various topics: the curious career of the play, black feminism, the politics of the visual, and the motif of the dream that cuts across Morrison’s work. This interview was conducted on March 29, 2019, at the symposium “Performing Morrison” at Washington University in St. Louis following a reading of scenes from Dreaming Emmett performed by students in the Performing Arts Department of Washington University in St. Louis. Daniel Banks: Before we begin, it is important to note that, as a production choice, we decided not to use recorded sound or to create a kind of realistic, reliving of the murder. All of the sound effects are made by the cast, by voices—human voices. This decision was driven by our first artistic question: How do we recreate this story and create spaces that are freeing and not damaging? Stacie McCormick: That is really significant and speaks to our first line of inquiry which is: What has it been like for you bringing this play to the stage? I am curious about what it takes to prepare a play like this for audiences. DB: Well, I think the first thing is just the pragmatics of it. After learning that Ms. Morrison did not require review of a copy of Nambi E. Kelley’s adaptation of Jazz (for which I served as Associate Director) ahead of its run at Baltimore Center Stage in 2017, this encouraged me to connect with her publisher, who commissioned the adaptation of Jazz, and I said “I’d like to speak to Ms. Morrison [End Page 688] about Dreaming Emmett and if she would be willing to revisit that.” Her publisher connected me to her agent, who, curiously was my agent about twenty years ago, and within a day he got back to me and said “Yes, she’s willing to have you and your company work with it.” So, the first step in the process was actually getting permission. I also need to note that there was another script. The scenes we performed today were...