The Watsons Go to Birmingham - 1963

Cuesheet Performance Guide

The Watsons Go to Birmingham— 1963 “Now the time has come for this nation to fulfill its promise. The events in Birmingham and elsewhere have so increased the cries for equality that no city or state or legislative body can prudently choose to ignore them.”

—President John F. Kennedy in a June 1963 nationally televised address

A World Premiere Kennedy Center Commission Script by Christina Ham Directed by Faye M. Price Music by Darius Smith From the book by Christopher Paul Curtis A recipient of a 1996 Newbery Honor and a Coretta Scott King Honor book citation

Presenting Sponsor of Performances for Young Audiences

Meet the Watson Fa “ My family couldn’t have known what we were walking into but one thing we knew for sure… there was no turning back.” —Kenny

About the Performance

MEET THE CHARACTERS

Welcome to a world premiere commissioned adaptation of The Watsons Go to Birmingham—1963, a play based on the book of the same name. With live music setting the scene, the actors will perform the story in a staged concert adaptation. Even though they won’t be moving around the stage much, the storytelling takes us on quite a journey through an important time in history. It all starts as Kenny Watson remembers his childhood in 1963—when his life changed forever.

KENNY WATSON (grownup), fast-talking radio disc jockey DANIEL (Daddy), proud with a big sense of humor WILONA (Mama), feisty but fair

IN

The Watsons and Their Story

BYRON (age 13), rule-breaking big brother KENNY (age 10), quiet and smart JOETTA (Joey, age 5), wants everyone to live in harmony KY GRANDMA SANDS, strict and wise

TN A Story Set in History

The Watsons live in Flint, Michigan, and some people call them “weird.” But more than anything, they have a sense of humor and can laugh at themselves and most of the crazy things life throws at them. One thing’s for sure: being a Watson especially means appreciating family. That part gets tested when Kenny’s older brother Byron can’t stay out of trouble. After their dramatic and sometimes funny efforts to change Byron’s behavior don’t work, Mama and Daddy decide to do something downright drastic. Their fateful decision puts the family on a crash course with one of the most tragic events of the civil rights movement.

The Watsons is a type of story known as historical fiction, because although the story and characters are made up, the tale takes place in the past and references actual happenings (like segregation and bombings). Historical fiction also features details of the time period. For example, in the story, Daddy buys an Ultra-Glide record player to play “45” records (seven-inch vinyl disks with a single song per side) in the car. Also notice that black people were referred to as Negroes, which was an acceptable term through the 1960s.

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THINK ABOUT… why would a writer want to set a story in the past, and what special challenges might come up in writing historical fiction versus a fictional novel?

WATCH FOR… the ways the Watsons show love for one another. How are these similar to or different from how your family gets along?

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amily The Big Ideas

The Watsons’s Trip

“One day you gonna understand that family means something,” says Mama in the play, a quote that highlights one of the big ideas, or themes, in the story. Other themes include dealing with racism, discrimination, and grief. During the performance, notice how these themes play out.

Flint, Michigan: The Watsons’s home city, one of many northern cities to which southern black Americans moved in large numbers between 1916 and 1970 (known as the Great Migration) for better-paying jobs and a better way of life.

WATCH FOR… how Kenny grieves over the events in Birmingham, and the surprising thing that helps him. Write Kenny a letter. What would you like to say to him?

Flint

MI

A Few Words to Know n

civil rights movement: an organized effort in the 1950s and 60s, with roots dating back to the Dred Scott case in the 1850s, to achieve equal rights and opportunities for black people in the United States through legal actions, negotiations, petitions, and nonviolent protests and marches

n segregation: legal separation of white and black races

specifically in the American South by requiring them to use separate (nearly always inferior) facilities, such as water fountains, schools, and transportation n desegregation: ending laws and practices requiring

Birmingham

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The Negro Motorist Green-Book: A guide (published from 1936 to 1966) for black travelers to help them find safe hotels, restaurants, and more.

separating or isolating people by race thanks to the 1954 Supreme Court Brown v. Board of Education ruling that segregation in schools violated the 14th amendment which granted equal rights to African Americans n integration: the bringing together of different

racial groups The Big Brown Bomber: The Watson family’s car, a 1948 Plymouth.

Birmingham, Alabama: One of the most segregated places in the United States in the 1960s and a focal point for civil rights protests.

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Bringing the Story t “ There’s people that want us dead… because of our skin color?” —Kenny

Inspirations for the Story

Telling the Story Well

This play is based on the best-selling book The Watsons Go to Birmingham—1963 by Christopher Paul Curtis. His award-winning writing for young people often focuses on family (with a hefty dose of humor) and stories told in historical contexts like the civil rights movement and the Great Depression. A family road trip to Florida first inspired him to write the Watsons’s tale. Then the poem “Ballad of Birmingham” by Dudley Randall inspired him to set his story during the civil rights movement and send the fictional family to Birmingham. For his characters, Curtis takes ideas from people in real life; Kenny combines aspects of his brother and himself while Joey is a lot like his sister Cydney.

Writers use techniques called literary devices to help spark imagination and help you engage with the story, whether on page or stage. One technique that Curtis and Ham use is narration, or telling the story from Kenny’s perspective, to let us see the world through his eyes and thoughts. They also use humor, including a lot of teasing and exaggeration, that helps make the characters seem more real. In writing the play, Ham added an additional device, the use of flashbacks, where an older Kenny recalls and retells his childhood.

WATCH FOR… how the narration makes Kenny’s experiences with racism more real.

THINK ABOUT… who in your family might make a good character in a story? Why? Write a story about an historical event and feature this family member.

Bringing the Story to Life Plays performed on stage also rely on techniques—called theatrical devices—to help you imagine the story. That includes everything from the performances themselves to the sets and costumes to lights and sound effects. As a “staged concert adaptation,” this production will use sets, costumes, and projected images. Your role is to really unleash your imagination and let it create the action of the story, from a scary road trip stop to getting caught up in a civil rights protest.

From Page to Stage Playwright Christina Ham adapted, or changed, the story of the book into a play to be performed on stage by shortening it and making minor changes to the action.

Coincidentally, she drew inspiration from her personal connection to the story’s history—her mother’s family lived in Birmingham and attended the city’s 16th Street Baptist Church, an important place in history and in the Watsons’s story. She also admired Curtis’s approach, noting, “It is refreshing to see how Christopher Paul Curtis deals with black joy and grief and trying to deal with that in this play has been an artistic balance I want to honor.”

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to Life When the set designer started to plan the set for this show, he captured his first ideas in this sketch. See how it compares to the set you see on stage.

SET DESIGN BY DANIEL CONWAY

How to Watch the Show A few things to remember as you watch this staged concert adaptation: n The actors know their parts but might look at their

scripts sometimes. n The actors’ facial expressions, postures, and gestures

offer valuable clues to what is happening. n How the actors speak—such as faster or slower, higher or

lower, softer or louder—can tell a whole range of feelings, from scared to sad to joyful to mischievous and more.

WATCH FOR… how the actor playing grownup Kenny performs other small roles, which is known as “doubling.”

LISTEN FOR… how live music (songs that sound modern as well as ones that sound like the 1960s) highlights the characters and their experiences. How does the music contribute to the storytelling? The band will include a grand piano, keyboard/synthesizer, guitar, bass, drums (with a variety of percussion instruments), two violins, viola, cello, flute, clarinet, alto saxophone, and bass clarinet.

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A Road Trip into Civ W

hen the Watsons head to Birmingham, they drive straight into real circumstances of the civil rights movement (you’ll see some major events of the movement highlighted below). The movement was a response to injustices and inequalities that had been oppressing black people since the late 1800s. Back then, in order to curb the rights of freed slaves, Southern state legislatures enacted “Jim Crow” laws. These mandated separate public facilities for white and black people (such as schools, transportation, parks, restrooms, drinking fountains, and restaurants).

Furthermore, literacy tests, poll taxes, and other measures prevented many black people from voting.

of bigotry and racial segregation. By the early 1960s, the civil rights movement had become a powerful force against these injustices.

But starting in the 1950s, more people began resisting these measures, and legal victories and nonviolent protests brought national attention to the ugly truths

Dr. King called Birmingham “probably the most thoroughly segregated city in the United States.” The city’s commissioner of public safety, Eugene “Bull” Connor,

Nonetheless, segregationists remained determined to block racial integration by any means necessary. Their rallying cry was voiced by new Alabama Governor George Wallace, who called for “segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.” During this intense period of struggle, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference led by Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. brought its campaign of nonviolent protests to Birmingham.

LEFT: The Montgomery (Alabama) Bus Boycott, started by Rosa Parks’s refusal to give up her bus seat to a white man in 1955, led to integrated seating on public transportation and one of the first major successes of the civil rights movement.

COURTESY OF AP IMAGES

RIGHT: In 1960, after four black college students staged a “sit-in” at a lunch counter reserved for white people in Greensboro, North Carolina, other students— like these in Durham, N.C.—did the same. These nonviolent protests by young people resulted in the desegregation of lunch counters across the South.

ABOVE: More than a thousand children and teenagers protesting peacefully in the “Children’s Crusade” in Birmingham in May 1963 were blasted by fire hoses, attacked by police dogs, or thrown in jail. The scenes so shocked the country and the world that city leaders finally agreed to negotiate with black leaders to end racial segregation.

COURTESY OF WIKIPEDIA COMMONS

COURTESY OF AP IMAGES

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vil Rights History brutally enforced segregation policies and actively hindered civil rights efforts while the Ku Klux Klan, a secret group violently opposed to integration, threatened and attacked black neighborhoods. One neighborhood had been bombed so often that locals referred to it as “Dynamite Hill,” while the city itself was nicknamed “Bombingham.” The city’s 16th Street Baptist Church became a headquarters for civil rights protesters. But in the story, it’s just where Joey wants to attend church on any given Sunday. (For more on the Church’s bombing, see page 8.)

“ I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character…”

— Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. during the August 1963 March on Washington where more than 200,000 people gathered to call for civil rights.

WATCH FOR… how the historical events in Birmingham are woven into the story.

THINK ABOUT… how the story affects what you think about the civil rights movement, and share three things that surprised you.

RIGHT: In September 1963, a bomb placed by white supremacists exploded at Birmingham’s 16th Street Baptist Church, killing four children and injuring many other people. The tragedy moved Congress closer to action. COURTESY OF AP IMAGES

BELOW: Despite violent attacks from local Alabama authorities and others, protesters marched from Selma to Montgomery in spring 1965 to demand stronger voting protections. In August, Congress passed the Voting Rights Act, prohibiting practices that prevented African Americans from exercising their right to vote. COURTESY OF AP IMAGES

LEFT: In 1964, the Civil Rights Act was passed by Congress and signed

by President Lyndon B. Johnson (with Dr. King at his side), outlawing discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin; ending racial segregation in public places; and banning unequal application of voting requirements. COURTESY OF AP IMAGES

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A Few More Things “ Running ain’t never been the answer. Imagine if we all ran. Somebody’s gotta stay.” —Grandma Sands

An Event That Awakened the World

More to Think About After the Show

Curtis’s book and this performance are in memory of Addie Mae Collins (age 14), Denise McNair (11), Carole Robertson (14), and Cynthia Wesley (14)—the four children killed in the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing.

The tragic event spurred long-needed change and also moved many artists to create works about it. Besides the poem that inspired Christopher Paul Curtis’s story (which later became a television movie and this play), other artistic works include Christina Ham’s play Four Little Girls, Joan Baez’s song “Birmingham Sunday,” and Spike Lee’s documentary 4 Little Girls.

“This play invites audiences into the world of a family as it deals with raising children during the civil rights movement, in which black people took a variety of roles that didn’t always include marching,” says playwright Christina Ham. “I hope audiences see they can be ‘changemakers,’ no matter how old they are.” After the performance, discuss the different ways people in the story and at that point in history were changemakers.

THINK ABOUT… how can you be a changemaker today?

The Watsons Go to Birmingham—1963 is part of the Kennedy Center’s Human Journey representing Identity and Resilience. kennedy-center.org/humanjourney

Denise McNair

Carole Robertson

Addie Mae Collins

The Human Journey is a collaboration between The Kennedy Center, National Geographic Society, and the National Gallery of Art, which invites audiences to investigate the powerful experiences of migration, exploration, identity, and resilience through the lenses of the performing arts, science, and visual art.

Cynthia D. Morris Wesley

Sensory-Friendly Performance on Saturday, March 23 at 2 p.m. Sensory-friendly performances are designed to create a performing arts experience that is welcoming to all patrons with sensory sensitivities. To learn more about sensory-friendly programming please visit: https://goo.gl/uAihKc

David M. Rubenstein Chairman Deborah F. Rutter President Mario R. Rossero Senior Vice President Education

Additional support for The Watsons Go to Birmingham­—1963 is provided by A. James & Alice B. Clark Foundation; the Kimsey Endowment; The Morris and Gwendolyn Cafritz Foundation; Paul M. Angell Family Foundation; Anne and Chris Reyes; and the U.S. Department of Education.

Funding for Access and Accommodation Programs at the Kennedy Center is provided by the U.S. Department of Education.

Major support for educational programs at the Kennedy Center is provided by David M. Rubenstein through the Rubenstein Arts Access Program.

Additional support for The Watsons Go to Birmingham—1963 is provided by The Laura Pels International Foundation for Theater.

Kennedy Center education and related artistic programming is made possible through the generosity of the National Committee for the Performing Arts.

The contents of this Cuesheet have been developed under a grant from the U.S. Department of Education and do not necessarily represent the policy of the U.S. Department of Education. You should not assume endorsement by the Federal Government.

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