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    Faith, Hope and Charity: Mary Mcleod Bethune
    Faith, Hope and Charity: Mary Mcleod Bethune
    Faith, Hope and Charity: Mary Mcleod Bethune
    Ebook170 pages1 hour

    Faith, Hope and Charity: Mary Mcleod Bethune

    By Sam Kelley

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    About this ebook

    Kelley captures Mary McLeod Bethunes trials and triumphs from an impoverished childhood in the cotton fields of South Carolina to her ascendancy as Black Americas most influential leader. Bethunes unyielding faith in God propels her forward on a lifelong mission of justice and equality. With a dollar and fifty cents she starts a school for black girls, which grows into a reputable university. She elevates the status of black women as founder and president of the National Council of Negro Women and builds opportunities for youth as head of the Division of Negro Affairs in Franklin Roosevelts National Youth Administration.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherXlibris US
    Release dateFeb 12, 2014
    ISBN9781493151967
    Faith, Hope and Charity: Mary Mcleod Bethune

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      Book preview

      Faith, Hope and Charity - Sam Kelley

      Copyright © 2014 by Sam Kelley.

      All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted

      in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission

      in writing from the copyright owner or his representative.

      Foreword is copyright 2013 by Lorna Littleway

      Author’s photo is copyright by Julio Torres Santana.

      Faith, Hope and Charity: Mary McLeod Bethune is published by Samuel L. Kelley

      P.O. Box 5336, Cortland, NY 13045

      sam.kelley@cortland.edu

      Rev. date: 02/05/2014

      To order additional copies of this book, contact:

      Xlibris LLC

      1-888-795-4274

      www.Xlibris.com

      Orders@Xlibris.com

      539510

      CONTENTS

      Foreword

      Acknowledgments

      Faith, Hope And Charity

      Characters

      Act One

      Act Two

      The Power Of Faith: Mary Mcleod Bethune’s Legacy

      Special Credits

      Music Selections

      Selected Books Dedicated To Bethune

      About The Playwright

      Additional plays available by Sam Kelley

      Pill Hill

      The Blue Vein Society

      Thruway Diaries

      White Chocolate

      Faith is the first factor in a life devoted to service. Without it, nothing is possible. With it, nothing is impossible.

      —Mary McLeod Bethune

      FOREWORD

      When I cofounded Juneteenth Legacy Theatre, in 1999, it was to expand the presence and influence of black theatre in Louisville, Kentucky, at the University of Louisville’s new African American Theatre Program, for which I previously served as co-Director. I wanted the company to be distinctive both for its presentation of the African American experience that focused on new works and for introducing the formats of staged readings and readers’ theater to our audiences. There was a growing demand for directors and actors who were not intimidated by collaborating with playwrights who rewrite during the rehearsal process.

      In addition to making new works its focus, I wanted Juneteenth Legacy Theatre to lead the way in producing plays about legacy that informed and inspired the audience. Enter Sam Kelley. Juneteenth Legacy Theatre practically grew up on Sam Kelley’s plays, producing four of them as readings, main stage, and touring productions: Driving While Black; The Blue Vein Society; Faith, Hope and Charity: The Mary McLeod Bethune Story; and Habeas Corpus over a ten-year period, 1999-2009.

      Sam and I were Black Theatre Network (BTN) colleagues, an organization committed to preserving and advancing African American Theatre. I attended the National Symposium on Black Theatre convened by August Wilson at Dartmouth College in 1999 as BTN’s vice president. I participated on the playwrights committee, and members brainstormed about obstacles black playwrights encountered and the dearth of opportunities.

      The founding of a theater company dedicated to new plays about the African-American experience became my personal mission. I discussed with Sam my vision for Juneteenth Legacy Theatre and my particular interest in plays set in the nineteenth century, especially the post-Civil War decades. It seemed that once slaves were freed, African Americans practically disappeared from the popular American canon until the turbulent ’60s.

      Sam sent me The Blue Vein Society, a three-character play set in the post-Reconstruction years, which was based on Charles Chesnutt’s short story The Wife of His Youth. Chesnutt was the first African American to achieve international recognition as a fiction writer by 1900. In October 2001, Juneteenth Legacy Theatre produced The Blue Vein Society as part of its Readers Theatre Tour, renamed BOLD JOURNEY in 2003. It played for a weekend of performances at Java House, a newly opened coffeehouse in West Louisville’s Portland neighborhood, located a stone’s throw from the Ohio River. The Blue Vein Society illuminated newly freed slaves’ search for their disbursed mates and featured a successful black businessman.

      The following year, Sam sent me another script, Faith, Hope and Charity: The Mary McLeod Bethune Story. It called for one actress to play Old Mary, Young Mary, and all the other persons Bethune encountered who played a major role in her life. By 2002, our annual festival of readings, Juneteenth Jamboree of New Plays, was in its third season of being hosted by the Actors Theatre of Louisville. It ran for three weeks and featured celebrity guest artists from either New York or California.

      Cecelia Antoinette, a gifted New York actress, whom I directed in Member of the Wedding and worked with on her cabaret piece, Watermelon Git It While Hot!!!, was our jamboree guest artist, and she performed (read does not do justice to her work) Sam’s play to a spellbound audience. Indeed, Faith, Hope and Charity: The Mary McLeod Bethune Story was a tour de force for an actress but would have limited exposure because there simply was not that kind of talent pool available in Louisville or Kentucky. And the story deserved a much larger audience.

      At this time, the company was looking at refining its tour program and decided to focus on biodramas, dramatic works with music or dramacals, and cabarets. Sam’s play about Bethune would fit well with our new emphasis, and I proposed some changes to Sam.

      Producer-suggested changes to a play are always a delicate discussion with the playwright. But Sam was very amenable. We discussed adding two characters, a younger actress and an actor who would play all the non-Bethune roles, male and female. We also talked about adding gospel songs to the play that would be sung a cappella.

      Among the first things I learned as a producer in a time of quickly eroding economic good fortune was the importance of the word sell. Sell would eclipse art, good, inspiring, and all the other words that entice us to make life in the theater a profession. Waiting for the script changes from Sam gave me ample time to reflect on what I liked about Faith, Hope and Charity. Most important of all was the fact that it was a good story, and a great one for families to see and hear. I also wondered about what it was in Sam’s personal history that made him gravitate toward Bethune.

      As a teacher, I adopted this motto: Knowing our past is essential to understanding our present condition in order to have a better future. To many of my students, history was a collection of memorized dates, events, causes, and effects. Say history and the kindest response was boring, which translated into do I have to go? But a personal dramatization can be thrilling. It’s the inside scoop. It takes us behind the scenes with an intimate retelling about phenomenal people who have the unusual capacity to influence and transform lives through their actions. Sam’s subject, Mary McLeod Bethune, herself a phenomenal woman, sparked my interest in the play, first as a reading and then as a production.

      What was it about Bethune and about Sam that made him invest several years in research and writing? Both Sam and Bethune come from large families. Sam was one of ten children, and Bethune was the fifteenth of seventeen children. They grew up in rural Southern communities: Sam in Marvell, Arkansas; Bethune in Mayesville, South Carolina. Both families were farmers, with cotton as the main crop. Both families were headed by God-fearing parents who were deeply religious. They valued education.

      Sam has acknowledged Bethune as a major inspiration in his life, having read her story while still in high school. Bethune seems to have that kind of impact on people. Being able to realize Bethune’s impact through a play was both challenging and inspiring for Sam.

      I received the revised script with thirteen hymns, work and children songs interspersed. I made plans to produce it at St. John’s Renaissance Church, near downtown Louisville in the east end in November 2004. Kathi Ellis directed a cast of Angela Tellis, Thea Browning, and Cederic Shields. Press was invited, declaring ‘Juneteenth Play Captures Bethune’s Struggles’ and audiences welcomed it as if in Rapture. We had an unqualified hit. For we had produced a play that families could see and enjoy together!

      Audiences were surveyed after performances, and I tabulated their written responses with the same glee as box-office receipts. We had produced a play that engaged black and white audiences in animated discourse, a singular feat in Louisville, Kentucky, in 2004.

      The next two years, the company experimented with producing plays at New York City festivals, the Fringe, and Midtown International. Critical acclaim of those efforts encouraged expanded programming in New York City, and the opportunity of a home venue at Nuyorican Poets Café, a ninety-nine-seat (including the balcony) East Village fixture, sealed the deal.

      In spring 2008, Faith, Hope and Charity: The Mary McLeod Bethune story was produced at the Nuyorican, directed by Sue Lawless with a cast of Geany Masai, Angela Arnold, and Ivan Thomas, who also served as music director, set and costume design by Harlen Penn, lighting design by Rome Neal, and stage management, Norman Small Jr.

      I did worry how this gospel-laden biodrama about a long-forgotten Civil Rights activist would play at a funky, hip, cool coffeehouse. Would it play as well as in a midsize city’s church? I needn’t have fretted. The maxim is true. Good theater plays anywhere.

      Thank you, Sam, for writing Faith, Hope and Charity: The Mary McLeod Bethune Story.

      Lorna Littleway

      Cofounder/Producing Director

      Juneteenth Legacy Theatre

      ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

      When I was asked by a colleague at the State University of New York College at Cortland to write a one-act play about an American hero as part

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