“Jubilee in the Rear View Mirror” Begins Next Month

The premiere of a two-act play based on the civil rights movement in 1964 will be presented Nov. 10-11 and Nov. 17-18 at the Evansville Civic Theater Annex in the Washington Square Mall. Saturday performances will begin at 7 p.m. Sunday shows will start at 2 p.m.

“Jubilee in the Rear View Mirror” is written by Garret Mathews, retired metro columnist for the Evansville Courier & Press. For more information, go to www.jubileeplay.com

The drama is set in the fictional town of Jubilee, Miss., during Freedom Summer when hundreds of activists headed South to register African-American voters and to desegregate schools, bus stations and businesses. Beatings and arrests were common. The Montgomery, Ala.-based Southern Poverty Law Center lists more than 40 murders during the 1950s and ‘60s, including several at the hands of local law enforcement.

Ashley Ellen Frary of Evansville will direct the play and supervise set construction. She is a graduate of Millikin, Ill., University with a degree in theater and a concentration in acting. While at Millikin, Frary studied abroad in Europe and worked with several companies to include the Globe Theatre. Since returning to Evansville in 2009, she’s worked as an actor, director, choreographer and designer with several local theater organizations, among them Civic Theater and Think Pink! Productions. She is both troupe member and artistic director for Tales & Scales, an Evansville-based arts organization.

“In the play, a young black civil rights worker from the North finds himself in a cell with a white racist who is behind bars for beating his wife,” Mathews says. “The background comes from dozens of interviews I conducted with men and women of both races who risked their lives to challenge the deeply-rooted segregationist social and political structure in the South in the 1960s.

“Before pressure was brought to bear, black children in department stores were not allowed to try on new shoes,” Mathews goes on. “Salesmen traced the edges of their old shoes onto butcher paper and fetched an approximate fit from inventory. Many African-Americans who attempted to vote were fired from their jobs by white employers. Some had their homes fire-bombed by the Ku Klux Klan.”

“The cast and crew will be paid professional salaries,” Mathews says, adding that he plans to take the troupe to Mississippi prior to rehearsals. “I want them to meet with folks who were a part of the civil rights movement and learn from their experiences.”