"Every 28 Hours" producer Jacqueline Thompson with St Louis actors Tiffany Knighten, Kenyatta Tatum and Reginald Pierre
In October 2014, thousands gathered in downtown St. Louis from around the country to march peacefully in the spirit of “Ferguson October,” one of many ongoing demonstrations responding to the death of Mike Brown, Eric Garner, and other unarmed casualties at the hands of the police. One year later, similar momentum has drawn playwrights, producers, and directors from coast to coast for a different kind of St. Louis demonstration: theatre as direct civic engagement.
Titled Every 28 Hours—referring to the contested statistic that an African American is killed every 28 hours by a member of the police—a host of the country’s most celebrated playhouses are joining forces with local talent in a week-long collaboration culminating in a day of performance Saturday, October 24. Chief among these players are the nationally recognized Oregon Shakespeare Festival (OSF) and New York’s One-Minute-Play Festival (#1MPF), the nation’s largest and longest running grassroots theater festival company. During their week-long residency, participants will tour important area sites and collaborate with St. Louis playwrights, directors, and actors, to create 60 to 90 “one-minute plays” inspired by the exigency and complexity of the #blacklivesmatter movement.
“What we’re hoping to do in St. Louis is to give the country a chance to talk to itself,” says OSF associate producer Claudia Alick. “Some of the collaborators are coming from a pure theater space, some from a very pure activist space, and many are coming from a cross-section of each. Our project is informed by thoughtful leaders in activism, performance, civic leadership, and communications. The work is hard and inspiring and necessary. I’m really glad that the project is going to be birthed in Ferguson.”
Saturday’s premiere in North County promises to be a capital-letter Big Deal for artists and activists alike. #1MPF founder Dominic D’Andrea describes the “plays” as 60 to 90 “heartbeats or pulses” building into a larger narrative and conversation within the local and national community. Those in residency will be scripting and choreographing based on their days directly engaging a comprehensive St. Louis population. “We meet on Wednesday, write on Thursday, rehearse on Friday, and open on Saturday,” D’Andrea explains.
University of Missouri-St. Louis theater professor Jacqueline Thompson, who has teamed up with Alick and D’Andrea to make Every 28 Hours happen, emphasizes the project’s magnitude for the region. “I can’t think of any project in the last five years where this many people came from all over the country to do work like this—it speaks to the dire needs of our time.”
In practice, to “stage” a protest already presumes a theatrical aspect to public acts of dissidence, and indeed many of the methods of #blacklivesmatter—“die-ins,” for instance, wherein marchers lie down on the ground for four and half minutes to represent the four and half hours Mike Brown’s body waited in the St. Louis heat—overtly embrace performance as a potent means of activism. By extension, acts of activism staged on an actual stage would necessarily remain in rich dialogue with protests staged in public space.
“For me as an artist,” explains Thompson, “I’m always thinking of how Nina Simone asked, ‘How can you be an artist and not reflect the times?’ At this hour and stage in my life, that’s all I really want to do—to create work that can challenge certain paradigms, shed light on issues not typically addressed in a theatre setting, keep the conversation going, the topics relevant.”
Partnering with St. Lou Fringe makes perfect sense for the project, given how much the local festival has put performing artists in direct contact with their communities. Says Fringe commandress-in-chief Em Piro, “When we were approached about collaborating on Every 28 Hours, it was clear that the vision of the project fit beautifully into our goal for the creative community of St. Louis. The nature of the project brings passionate artists together, showcases the identity of St. Louis to artistic leaders from across the country, and invites a collaborative conversation—engaging artists, activists, and audiences to delve into one of the primary cultural dialectics of our time.”
One year from now, companies who participated in Every 28 Hours plan to restage the plays developed in St. Louis at their own theaters across the country. But arguably like the #blacklivesmatter movement itself, it happens in Ferguson first.
Every 28 Hours will premiere October 24 at two locations: the Dellwood Recreation Center (10266 W Florissant), at 2 p.m., and the Kranzberg Arts Center (501 N. Grand) at 8 p.m. Both performances are free and open to the public. For more information, go to thefergusonmoment.com.
