Jan 19, 2025
Eleanore Tapscott is an actor and director, having directed such shows as Colonial Players’ By the Way, Meet Vera Stark and appeared in NextStop Theatre’s POTUS: Or Behind Every Great Dumbass Are Seven Women Trying to Keep Him Alive. From her home in northern Virginia, Tapscott spoke with DC Theater Arts about directing Colonial Players’ latest production, Alabama Story. Eleanore Tapscott. Photo courtesy of the artist. What drew you to direct Alabama Story? I’m in the Colonial Players database of directors, and I received an email saying they were looking for directors. I saw Alabama Story on the productions list and thought, “I don’t know that play,” so I googled, and as I read what it was about, I thought I have to put my name in to direct this. The fact that it’s based on true events, that it’s so relevant to issues going on today over 60 years later, just resonated with me. For me as a theater artist, director, and actress, it’s about telling stories and who’s going to tell our story, but also how are our stories going to be told? This play really resonated with me at this moment in time because so many people, Indigenous people, Black people, and other ethnic groups are having our history whitewashed. And part of what banning does is to write people out of history, and we have to push back against that. The play feels all too relevant today. How do you see it connecting to more recent “book bans”? I spoke about this in my interview with Colonial’s director selection committee and then talked with the cast. Yes, book banning itself is important, but we need to look at what the banning is trying to accomplish. The book in the play wasn’t banned just because people didn’t like that story; it was viewed as propagating a social tenet, interracial marriage, that people like Senator Higgins’ character could not abide. Sixty years later we’re still hearing these objections. When you look at the content that people are trying to restrict, it’s those that tell the stories of moving our society forward, of progressing. And sadly, there are people who want us to retreat, who don’t want those stories told. While preparing the show, was there anything that surprised you? I did not know Garth Williams’ book, which inspired the controversy. One of the first things I did was buy the book and see the illustrations. It was very creative but based in real things. The images just leap off the page. I also reached out to Kenneth Jones, the playwright, who will be speaking after the January 26 performance, and he very graciously shared some of his dramaturgical notes with me that I incorporated into our rehearsal process. One of the main notes he gave, that I recognized before talking with him, is that the Higgins and Crone characters have to be three-dimensional people. They cannot be played as stereotypes, otherwise the play goes nowhere. Whether I personally agree with Higgins’ worldview, which I don’t, there are many people out there who do. They are comfortable with it because they’re getting something out of it. And those people are not stereotypes. They’re real people. They are somebody’s mother, sister, brother, uncle. So, we can’t stereotype them and poke fun at them. We have to see them as real people. This comes across in Higgins’ real love for literature, which makes for a surprising last interaction between him and Ms. Reed, the librarian. Yes, that scene helps show how two people with polar opposite perspectives — about how our society should be constructed and how we should navigate through this world — can still have a connection through their passion for books and for reading. And again, a lot of times people like Higgins are stereotyped as knuckle draggers. He’s not; he’s a very intelligent man, a reader. CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: Pamela Wilterdink (Emily Reed) and Todd Smith (Sen. Higgins); Ellen Quay (Lily Whitfield) and Denzell Massenburg (Joshua Moore); Rick Estberg (Herschel Webb), Pamela Wilterdink (Emily Reed), Jonathan Blansfield (Thomas), and Todd Smith (Sen. Higgins); Todd Smith (Sen. Higgins) and Brian Binney (Bobby Crone), in ‘Alabama Story.’ Photos courtesy of Eleanore Tapscott. One thing that surprised me was the humor. I wasn’t expecting a play about book banning to be funny. Can you speak about that? Kenneth Jones writes so beautifully with such powerful imagery about such deep issues, particularly the scene where Joshua remembers almost being lynched, that if we don’t leaven it with a little humor, I think it just becomes emotional overwhelming for the audience and we don’t want them to tune out. We want them to stay continually tuned in. Another aspect of the script that I liked apart from its theme was just its theatricality. It reminds me of Our Town, a play I like very much. I asked Kenneth about that, and he was inspired by that play. Garth Williams has some of the qualities of the stage manager. You also have elements of Tennessee Williams’ memory plays in this play. Both of those worlds formed how I saw the play, especially in terms of a very circular kind of staging. I just saw this continuous flow in terms of structure. That’s how it spoke to me. What do you hope audiences will take away from seeing Alabama Story? There’s a meme going around that says the good people in history were not the ones banning books. The play is certainly about people dealing within a situation of banning books and one individual’s reaction to it. But I want the audience to think more broadly. It’s not the banning. That’s important, and we need to fight against that, but it’s the why behind the banning: Who are they trying to restrict, to subjugate, to marginalize from our society? That’s what banning does. All the efforts to marginalize books are to keep people from fully participating, and that is what I want the audience to understand. I’m going to pick on Florida because we know that they are notorious with the number of books that they ban. But they have those bans because they don’t want people to know the history of the LGBTQ community, about Black people and the history of African Americans in this country. Think about that. Why do they not want you to know the history? So it’s not just the books that are always banned somewhere in the USA. Why are people so determined to restrict us from information? Thank you. Is there anything else you’d like people to know about the show? Come see it. It’s based on a true story, wonderfully told. You will have a good time, and you will learn something. Alabama Story plays through February 1, 2025, at Colonial Players of Annapolis – 108 East Street, Annapolis, MD. For tickets ($26), call the box office at 410-268-7373 or purchase online. A virtual playbill is available here. Running Time: Two hours and 15 minutes, including one 15-minute intermission. Alabama Story By Kenneth Jones Directed by Eleanore Tapscott SEE ALSO: A powerful book-ban drama in ‘Alabama Story’ at Colonial Players of Annapolis (review by Charles Green, January 11, 2025)
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