BACK TO SCHOOL Poet Trethewey’s ‘Native Guard’ premieres at Alliance

By Collin Kelley INtown Editor

How do you take a Pulitzer Prize-winning collection of personal and historical poetry and turn it into a theatrical event?

The Alliance Theatre’s Artistic Director Susan V. Booth thinks she has the answer, and the results will premiere on the Hertz Stage this month as former U.S. Poet Laureate and Decatur resident Natasha Trethewey’s Native Guard transitions from page to stage.

“First of all, I want people to know we are not deconstructing poetic form and reconstructing it as theatrical play,” Booth said. “Form is an important part of Natasha’s work - there’s a structural elegance in each individual poem. The last thing I wanted to do was damage that structural integrity.”

Trethewey’s lauded collection is an elegiac series of poems about her mother, racial strife in the Deep South and a connecting thread about the Louisiana Native Guards, one of the first black regiments pressed into service during the Civil War.

Booth said the challenge of the production was to create an environment so the poems could be experienced by more of the senses including musically and visually, so the performances are more than just a reading of the work divvied up between actors.

To achieve that goal, Booth and her team worked with photographer John Burger, filmmaker Adam Larson and have picked a soundtrack of music – including Nina Simone, which is referenced in the work – to make the poems come alive.

Booth described herself as an “obsessive reader of poetry” and said she was blown away by the “velocity and dramatic narrative arc” of Trethewey’s work.

“I met Natasha at a dinner party hosted by [WABE host] Lois Reitzes and I just went there - I asked her if she had ever considered her poetry living on the stage,” Booth recalled.

Booth said the Hertz Stage space will look completely different for the production. A memorial wall that will give the audience a chance to write messages to departed loved ones is part of the experience.

“I want the audience to encounter words, images and music as soon as they walk into the space,” she said. “I’m not interested in having actors on a stage with the audience at a remove.”

After each show, there will be a guest facilitator to start discussion with the audience on how the work resonated during that specific performance.

Booth is also up front about her agenda behind Native Guard: “I intentionally want people to come and hear poetry. That’s the intent by design.”

Native Guard will run Sept. 26 to Oct. 19 on the Hertz Stage of the Alliance Theatre at the Woodruff Arts Center. For tickets and more details, visit alliancetheatre.org.