(thehiltop) Against a dimmed, overhead light and a pair of prison bars suspended from the rafters above, the stage was given a stirring atmosphere. Haze crept across the set, spilling into the audience. Before long, the outside world no longer existed. The theatre was transformed into the confines of a prison, and the audience was there, during the summer of 1938.
An award-winning three-act play by Tennessee Williams, “Not about Nightingales,” tells the compelling story of a group of inmates who fight back through a hunger strike against the oppressive governance of the jail warden. Inspired by true events, Williams is able to create a despotic situation in 1938 that still holds firm for a contemporary audience.
With riveting performances from the cast and a powerful display from the design team, the Howard University’s Department of Theatre Arts brought “Not about Nightingales” to life at the Ira Aldridge Theatre from November 5 to November 9.
Under the direction of Eric Ruffin, and with an all-black cast, transparent themes concerned the disparaging treatment of blacks and homosexuals and the unlawful incarceration of young black men by a dominating, white bureaucratic society. These were but a few elements that reverberated throughout the play.
Production Dramaturg, Otis Ramsey-Zoe, wrote, “The world inside the prison is not divorced from the concerns of the outside world, and those issues creep into the play, including the Great Depression, President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal, Hitler’s rise to power, Mussolini’s dictatorship and the threat of war.”
