A New Play Explores Race Through A 1951 Birmingham Basketball Court
Steven Bond Jr., Dylan Guy Davis, Edwin Brown III (in the air), James Holloway, Adrian Baidoo in "Separate and Equal"
When Seth Panitch visited the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute, he was struck by a legal code book that listed rules of segregation.
“What stood out to me was this one sequence when they talked about [black and white] kids, children, and how they couldn’t play games together,” says Panitch. “They were so specific.”
Panitch says in the case of basketball, it was too costly for Alabama to build separate basketball courts. So authorities would assign certain times that blacks and whites could use the courts.
Panitch, who is the head of the University of Alabama’s acting programs, had a thought. What if black and white teens stumbled onto each other on the court? And could that be a prism through which to discuss race?
That was the spark for the new play “Separate and Equal.” Panitch wrote and directed the play which premiered this month off-Broadway in New York. The play centers on a hypothetical basketball game between three white and three black teens in 1951 Birmingham — a game that would have been illegal.
Panitch used the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute’s oral history collection to inform his work. He says reading transcripts he noted how parents trained their children to fall into their expected roles under segregation.
“One of the main themes of the play is how we keep expecting the youth to sort our problems out. But the problem is that we’ve trained them so intently on our own failures that it’s difficult to see any other possibility in the future,” says Panitch.
In the theater, the audience surrounds the stage as if they were watching a real basketball game.
“They might get sweated on cause they’re pretty close to the action,” says Panitch.
The actors’ movements are choreographed, a combination of basketball and modern dance, and set to an original score that transitions from rock and to jazz. Panitch says he considered staging a real basketball game but it was problematic. A misthrown ball could go into the audience. He also couldn’t control the score which is a key plot point.
Panitch says symbolic is better.
“When you stylize something it really frees up the audience’s imagination for them to read the play in perhaps a different way than they would if it was literal,” says Panitch.
“Separate and Equal” runs in New York through September 30th, but it had a short preview in Tuscaloosa in August. Panitch says audiences in both cities would linger and discuss the show. In Alabama, the history was very real.
“Many of the older people in my audience in Alabama would come up and talk to me afterwards and say ‘That was my uncle.’ Or ‘that was my grandfather’ or ‘I see my family in that,’” says Panitch.
He says the New York audience may have had more distance from the history, but they are more polarized.
“In some respects, they do feel that it’s factual to them as a modern expression of race,” says Panitch.
He says there are no plans to bring the play to Birmingham, where it is set, but he hopes it will happen.
“I think that would be very important to do it where it was researched…and near so many of those milestones in the struggle,” says Panitch.
Soft medium, hard truths – National Endowment for the Arts recognizes a Navajo quilter
A Navajo woman who has spent 50 years sewing has now been honored with an NEA award for her unique quilts. She is unafraid to criticize the mainstream culture that's marginalized Indigenous artists.
In Lebanon, villagers on the border watch Syria’s revolution with unease
While Syrian refugees in Lebanon return home, many Lebanese remain on edge. Years of conflict have left the Syria-Lebanon borderlands scarred, and fears grow that instability could spill over again.
Bidders are back in court battling over the auction of Alex Jones’ Infowars
A U.S. bankruptcy judge is hearing arguments for and against selling the show to The Onion, the satirical news site named the winning bidder. Host Alex Jones says the auction was rigged.
Police arrest ‘person of interest’ Luigi Mangione in United Healthcare CEO shooting
A man has been arrested in Pennsylvania in connection with the shooting death of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson.
Supreme Court rejects challenge to Boston’s school admissions policy
The court's action was the second time the justices declined to intervene in an admissions program based on geography since their 2023 ruling invalidating affirmative action in higher education.
Supreme Court rejects challenge to Hawaii gun licensing rules — for now
At issue was a Hawaii State Supreme Court decision that allowed the state to prosecute a man carrying a loaded pistol without a license.
