News Release

Local angles: Durham, Goldsboro

By DAMIEN JACKSON
Sonja Haynes Stone Center for Black Culture and History

CHAPEL HILL — "The Wise Ones," a theatrical drama by Durham playwright Howard Craft, will show twice in June at the Sonja Haynes Stone Center for Black Culture and History at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Free public performances will be at 7 p.m. June 3 and at 2 p.m. June 4 in the center’s Cobb Theatre.

The play, set in the fictional town of Vicksville, Ala., in 1965, examines the ironic and tragic turn of events for two families during a Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) voter registration drive.

One family believes in SNCC’s efforts and actively supports the cause. The other believes that the local push for civil rights will bring nothing but trouble to black residents in this small community.

Craft, a Goldsboro native and 1997 N.C. Central University graduate, developed the play from his memories of his grandfather’s involvement in the civil rights movement and a friend’s tales about SNCC organizing in mid-1960s Alabama.

"I have always wanted to write something that would capture not only the complexity of the times, but the complexities of the people, and the strategies and philosophies the people used to struggle for the basic human rights denied them," Craft said.

"The Wise Ones" is Craft’s second play. He has won the North Carolina Arts Council’s Playwriting Fellowship and two New Play Project awards from NCCU’s theater department. He also is a poet. He teaches creative writing to children through a Durham-based community arts and education organization.

Karen Dacons-Brock, an associate professor at NCCU, will direct the production at the Stone Center. The cast draws heavily from NCCU’s theatre department. For more information, call the center at (919) 962-9001.

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Stone Center contact: Damien Jackson, (919) 962-9001

News Services contacts: Print, L.J. Toler, (919) 962-8589; broadcast, Karen Moon, (919) 962-8595