PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — This year’s free summer show at Malcolm X Park is “Fraternity.” It’s a play about a group of Black men in their 50s and 60s faced with the choice of whether to preserve their place in society or fight for the civil rights of others.
Director Eric Carter said the most important thing about the play is that the men were there during the Birmingham, Alabama, bombing that killed four little girls.
Decades later, these men are in very different positions.
“Some of these guys have gotten to positions of power, politically. And now … One wants to fight for civil rights for everyone else, the other one who got to the power no longer cares.”
Carter says the play reveals a side of Black men that not many people see.
“Do people know how many Black men just get up in the morning and sit on the edge of their bed and just cry? And they cry because of the pressures that they have to do to lead their community, lead their family, lead themselves … The pressure that we put on our citizens to what we suppose to be right, what we are supposed to do.” Carter said.
The play runs Aug. 21 through 24, and features some big names in Philadelphia theater, including Brian Anthony Wilson, Carlo Campbell, Ozzie Jones, Steve Crum, Walter DeShields, Steve Wright, and Leon Alexander.
Carter says the pay-what-you-can, open atmosphere at Malcolm X Park draws in families who were planning to see the show, and even kids walking by on the street.
“It is like a big block party, and all walks of life just come to this park and converge to take in some good art,” Carter said.
And after that, Executive Director LaNeshe Miller-White says Theatre in the X is preparing for a big trip to Africa in the fall.
“The co-founders are going on a trip to Sierra Leone with Taylor J. Mitchell's company, Dream Big, Dream Black. … We're going to work for a week with children there, devising a piece, teaching them kind of varying parts of theater and performance,” Miller-White said.
Donations to support the trip can be made at theatreinthex.com.