PRODUCTION HISTORY

"Flyin' West" was commissioned by The Alliance Theatre in Atlanta, Georgia and premiered there in November 1992 under the direction of The Alliance's Artistic Director, Kenny Leon. The play has subsequently been produced at Indiana Repertory Theatre, Crossroads Theatre Company, the New WORLD Theater, St. Louis Repertory Theatre, Long Wharf Theatre, BAM's Majestic Theatre, San Diego Repertory Theatre, and the Kennedy Center.

Link to Photos from a production of the play

ORIGINAL CAST

The original cast was as follows:

Carol Mitchell-Leon

Sharlene Ross

Elizabeth Van Dyke

Kim Hawthorne

Peter Jay Fernandez

Donald Griffin

CHARACTERS

Sophie Washington

a black woman, born into slavery, age 36

Miss Leah

a black woman, born into slavery, age 73

Fannie Dove

a black woman, age 32

Wil Parrish

a black man, born into slavery, age 40

Minnie Dove Charles

a black woman, age 21

Frank Charles

a very light-skinned black man, born into slavery, age 36

SETTING

Fall 1898 outside the all-black town of Nicodemus, Kansas.

The play takes place in and around the house shared by SOPHIE, FAN, and more recently, MISS LEAH. The wome are wheat farmers and the house sits in the midst of the vastness of the Kansas prairie. Activity will take place mainly in the house's kitchen/dining/living room, which has a table, chairs, a small desk, a wood burning stove, etc. In the back and upstairs are other bedrooms, one of which will also be the scene of action during the play. Other activity takes place in the area outside the front door, including wood gathering and chopping, hanging of clothes to dry, etc. There is also a brief arrival scene at the nearby train station, which need only be suggested.

PLAY STRUCTURE

Act I

Scene 1: A fall evening

Scene 2: Two days later; early afternoon

Scene 3: The same day; evening

Scene 4: The next morning

Scene 5: Late that Night

Act II

Scene 1: Early the next morning

Scene 2: The next Sunday; early morning

Scene 3: Sunday afternoon

Scene 4: Monday morning

Scene 5: Seven months later; April 1899

PROGRAM NOTES

(These are the author's notes)

The Homestead Act of 1860 offered 320 acres of "free" land, stolen from the dwindling populations of Native Americans, to US citizens who were willing to settle in the western states. Although many settlers lived in traditional family groups, by 1890, a quarter of a million unmarried or widowed women were running their own farms and ranches. The farm work was hard and constant, but many of these women were able to survive because of their own physical stamina, determination and the help of their neighbors.

Large groups of African American homesteaders left he South following the Civil War to settle in all-black towns. The so-called "Exodus of 1879" saw twenty to forty thousand African American men, women and children - "Exodusters" - reach Kansas under the guidance of a charismatic leader, Benjamin "Pap" Singleton, who escaped from slavery and claimed later "I am the whole cause of the Kansas migration!"

Crusading black journalist Ida B. Wells's call to her readers to leave Memphis, Tennessee, after an 1892 lynching and riot, was heeded by over seven thousand black residents of the city who packed up as many of their belongings as they could carry and headed west in search of a life free from racist violence. Unfortunately, their dreams were shattered as many of the western states enacted Jim Crow laws as cruel as any in the old Confederacy and effectively destroyed most of the black settlements by the early 1900s.

This is a story of some of the black people who went west.

EXCERPT FROM THE PLAY

This monologue comes at the beginning of scene 4 in Act II. In it, Miss Leah talks about having her children sold away from her when she was a slave.

MISS LEAH: When they sold my first baby boy offa the place, I felt like I couldn't breathe for three days. After that, I could breathe a little better, but my breasts were so full of milk they'd soak the front of my dress. Overseer kept telling me he was gonna have to see if nigger milk was really chocolate like they said it was, so I had to stay away from him 'til my milk stopped runnin'. And one day I saw James and I told him they had sold the baby, but he already knew it. He had twenty sold offa our place by that time. Never say any of 'em.

When he told me that, I decided he was gonna at least lay eyes on at least one of his babies come through me. So next time they put us together, I told him that I was gonna be sure this time he got to see his chile before Colonel Harrison sold it. But I couldn't. Not that one or the one after or the one after the ones after that. James never saw their faces. Until we got free and had our five free babies. Then he couldn't look at 'em long enough. That was aman who loved his children. Hug 'em and kiss 'em and take 'em everywhere he go.

I think when he saw the fever take all five of them, one by one like that... racin' each other to heaven... it just broke him down. He'd waited so long to have his sons and now he was losing them all again. He was like a crazy man just before he died. So I buried him next to his children and I closed the door on that little piece of house we had and I started walkin' west. If I'd had wings, I'd a set out flyin' west. I needed to be some place big enough for all my sons and all my ghost grandbabies to roam around. Big enough for me to think about all that sweetness they had stole from me and James and just holler about it loud as I want to holler.

PUBLICATION HISTORY

Flyin West and Other Plays. TCG, 1999.

and in the following anthologies:

Black Drama in America. Darwin T. Turner (Ed.). Howard University Press, 1994.

Contemporary Plays by Women of Color: An Anthology. Kathy A. Perkins and Roberta Uno (Eds.). Routledge, 1996.

REVIEWS AND ARTICLES ABOUT THE PLAY