The Plays
- The Parchman Hour
Mike Wiley Productions’ newest work commemorates the 50th anniversary of the Freedom Riders.
- A Game Apart
A Game Apart provides a glimpse of Jackie Robinson’s life during a bygone era of separate and unequal locker rooms, of whites only hotels, and of restaurants with only a back door for colored athletes to enter.
- One Noble Journey
Henry “Box” Brown was an African American born into slavery in 1816 in Louisa County, Virginia. After his family was taken away, Brown mailed himself to friends and freedom in Philadelphia.
- Brown v. Board of Education:
Over Fifty Years Later
In 1952, the Supreme Court heard a number of school segregation cases, including Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas.
- Tired Souls:
King and The Montgomery Bus Boycott
Tired Souls opens in Montgomery, Alabama on December 1, 1955 — the day Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a city bus.
- Dar He: The Story of Emmett Till
In 1955, a 14-year-old black Chicago youth traveled to the Mississippi with country kinfolk and southern cooking on his mind. He walked off the train and into a world he could never understand.
- Life Is So Good
Life Is So Good brings audiences the story of 103-year-old George Dawson, a slave's grandson who learned to read at age 98.
- Blood Done Sign My Name
In Blood Done Sign My Name, Mike Wiley brings to life the recollections of author Tim Tyson surrounding the 1970 murder of Henry “Dickie” Marrow in Oxford, NC.
Mike Wiley Productions’ newest work commemorates the 50th anniversary of the Freedom Riders. In 1961, the original 13 riders boarded a bus in Washington, DC bound for New Orleans via Mississippi and Alabama. They barely made it out of Alabama alive. Over the course of the next three months, approximately 300 other riders took up the mantle and followed the path of those first brave few. Mobs brutally assaulted many. Others were arrested and, instead of posting bail, chose to serve sentences in one of the most brutal prisons in the South, Parchman Farm, proving the Freedom Riders and the movement to desegregate interstate travel would not be deterred.
Presented in the style of the variety shows of yesteryear, this moving production explores three of the tensest months of 1961. The Parchman Hour brings to the stage powerful oral histories and conversations from the Freedom Rides’ most iconic protagonists and antagonists.
“Did you know that at Parchman, to pass the time and to keep our spirits up, we ‘invented’ a radio program? I don’t recall that we named it, but ‘The Parchman Hour’ would have been a good name. Each cell had to contribute a short “act” (singing a song, telling a joke, reading from the Bible -- the only book we were allowed) and in between acts we had ‘commercials’ for the products we lived with every day, like the prison soap, the black-and-white striped skirts, the awful food, etc. We did this every evening, as I recall; it gave us something to do during the day, thinking up our cell’s act for the evening.” — Mimi Real, Freedom Rider, 1961
Originally produced by the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University and the Department of Dramatic Art at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, The Parchman Hour is a celebration of bravery and a call to action through remembrance, leaving the audience asking, “Who stood up for me? Moreover, for whom can I stand up for today? Who needs my words, my song, my voice?”
Production is 90 minutes in length and appropriate for a mixed audience.
There is also a 50 minute student version
for grades 6 and higher.
Downloads
Review
Documentary :: Parchman Hour :: Mississippi from Aravind DP on Vimeo.
The Parchman Hour :: Mike Wiley - Jessie Harris