New, gripping play at Billie Holiday Theatre commemorates the lynchings of eleven African Americans-- including Mary Turner and her unborn baby-- in 1918 Brooks County, Georgia.
The Billie Holiday Theatre and RestorationART present the New York premiere of "A Small Oak Tree Runs Red," written by Brooklyn's own LeKethia Dalcoe and directed by renowned actor and director, Harry Lennix.
Set during the the turn of the 20th Century in Georgia, "A Small Oak Tree Runs Red," is a play about when lynchings were a regular means of retaliation and control against the country's black citizens in the South (some 3,437 were lynched between the years 1882 and 1951).
Three characters-- Hayes Turner, Mary Turner and Sidney Johnson-- are brought together by similar circumstances, we soon learn. Their conversations soon unfold a story of terrorism, an account of the calamitous effect that lynchings have had on the lives of its victims-- one so far reaching, it impaired even the souls of the dead.
Trapped someplace between reality and memory, all three characters are in equal parts haunted, tortured and confused by their circumstances. We watch as they dwell in purgatory, an abyss where they relive the stories that have brought them to this premature afterlife.
A Small Oak Tree Runs Red was inspired by the 1918 killing of Hampton Smith in Brooks County, Georgia and the holocaust lynchings that followed, an indelible stain on Americas history when to forget was to forever perish... just like the countless bodies and stories before them
WHAT: A Small Oak Tree Runs Red, a play
WHEN: Friday, February 2, 2018 - March 4, 2018
WHERE: The Billie Holiday Theatre, 1368 Fulton Street, Brooklyn, NY
To purchase tickets, go here.
Single ticket buyers: use code "AKILA" for a special promo discount. For VIP Groups of 10-49 Tickets, enter code: GROUP10. For VIP Group of 50 tickets or more, enter code: GROUP50. For general groups of 10-49 tickets, enter code: GROUP. For general groups of 50+, enter: GROUPS50. Not valid between 2.2 and 2.8 shows. Purchase tickets at www.TheBillieHoliday.org