In November 1955, actor-turned-playwright Alice Childress saw her play Trouble in Mind premiere off-Broadway at the Greenwich Mews Theatre in New York City. Using a play-within-a-play structure, a multi-racial and multi-generational company of actors rehearses a well-meaning melodrama meant to stir audience sympathy for the brewing civil rights movement. In doing so, Childress puts on full view the personal, professional, and political challenges her characters face as they try to move both theater and society forward.
The play met with enthusiasm when it opened, and a Broadway transfer soon seemed within reach. But producers decided 1950s Broadway wasn't ready for the unsparing truths or the ambiguous ending of Childress's play, and pressed her to rewrite toward a softer, clearer, happier resolution. She refused. The production was pulled, the transfer never happened, and the work waited until 2021 to make its Broadway debut.
Seventy years later, Childress's hilarious and heartbreaking play gets a timely revival in Baltimore at Fells Point Corner Theatre, running November 7 through 30. Kay-Megan Washington, who plays the central role of Wiletta Mayer, joined Gavin Witt to share her thoughts on the role and the play in her first appearance on WBJC.
Tickets and more information are available at fpct.org.
