Collaboraction Theatre announces the cast and design team for Trial in the Delta: The Murder of Emmett Till, a live, fully-produced stage production during Black History Month, running February 9-19, 2023 at and co-presented with The DuSable Black History Museum and Education Center. Tickets, $30-$55, are on sale at collaboraction.org.
Trial in the Delta plays like a live, interactive reenactment experience of the actual court proceedings that occurred in Sumner, Mississippi in 1955, using only the same words that were actually said during the trial.
Actors playing witnesses for the defense and prosecution, including Emmett Till’s mother, Mamie Till-Bradley, his uncle, Mose Wright, and others will be seated among the audience, bringing the courtroom action to vivid life.
Collaboraction’s Trial in the Delta: The Murder of Emmett Till reveals the courage it took for Emmett Till’s uncle, Mose Wright, played by Darren Jones (left), to point out J.W. Milam and Roy Bryant during the 1955 trial. Adia Alli (right, back to camera), played Mamie-Till Bradley in the 2022 enhanced reading at DuSable. Photos by Joel Maisonet.
Key characters based in real life include judge Curtis Swango, defense attorney J.J. Breeland, district attorney Gerald Chatham, and J.W. Milam and Roy Bryant, the two men found not guilty of murdering Emmett Till, one of the most monumental injustices of the U.S. legal system in the 20th century.
To bring the once-hidden trial to life, Collaboraction commissioned Chicago playwrights G. Riley Mills and Willie Round to co-adapt the original 354-page transcript into a 90-page immersive theatrical reenactment of what actually occurred in that 1955 rural Mississippi courtroom. Collaboraction Artistic Director Anthony Moseley and Company Member Dana Anderson are co-directors.
“Once in a lifetime, if we are lucky, a project like this comes along and all we can do is play our part to serve the greater good of telling an important story and belonging to each other,” said Moseley. “There are many plays about Emmett Till, but they are fictions created out of horrid facts that only guess at the actual language. When audiences experience how everything actually went down in that Mississippi courtroom, the impact is even more profound.”
Perri Irmer, President and CEO of The DuSable, said “Trial in the Delta allows contemporary audiences to experience this flagrant and historic racial injustice of our legal system. Placed in the context of today's much-publicized trials against Black men, this new work also illuminates ways in which history repeats itself.”
Trial in the Delta launches its run with a student matinee, Thursday, February 9 at 10:30 a.m. Public performances follow Friday and Saturday, February 10 and 11 at 7 p.m.; Thursday, Friday and Saturday, February 16-18 at 7 p.m., and Sunday, February 19 at 3 p.m.
Press opening night is Saturday, February 11 at 7 p.m.
Run time is two hours. Each performance will be followed by a Crucial Conversation introduced by Pilar Audain, associate director, Truth, Racial Healing, and Transformation (TRHT) Greater Chicago, housed at The Chicago Community Trust, and lead writer/performer/guide of Collaboraction's recent "healing theater" production, Moonset Sunrise.
Tickets to Trial in the Delta are $30-$55, and are on sale at collaboraction.org.
The DuSable Black History Museum and Education Center is located at 740 E. 56th Place in Chicago’s Hyde Park community. Email info@collaboraction.org for information on student and group rates, and private event performances. Trial in the Delta is recommended for ages 12 and up.
For more information, visit collaboraction.org, or follow the company on Twitter, Facebook, TikTok, Instagram or YouTube.
Trial in the Delta is a highlight of Chicago Theatre Week, an annual celebration of the rich tradition of theater-going in Chicago during which visitors and residents can access value-priced tickets. A program of the League of Chicago Theatres in partnership with Choose Chicago, Chicago Theatre Week runs February 16-26, 2023. Learn more at ChicagoTheatreWeek.com.
Trial in the Delta: Behind the scenes
Trial in the Delta: The Murder of Emmett Till features (top, from left) Richard Alan Baiker as Judge Curtis Swango, Maddy Brown as Carolyn Bryant, Tyler Burke as Roy Bryant, Colin Callahan as Robert Hodges, Kayla Franklin as Mamie Till-Bradley, Darren Jones as Mose Wright, Ron David Lipski as the Clerk, Andy Luther as district attorney Gerald Chatham, Matt Miles as J.W. Milam, Lyle Miller as Chester Miller, John Henry Roberts as John Edward Cothran/Peter Hackus, Matt Rosin as George Smith, Steve Silver as defense attorney J.J. Breland, Jamie Vann as H.C. Strider and Mysun Aja Wade as Willie Reed.
Collaboraction’s cast for Trial in the Delta: The Murder of Emmett Till features Richard Alan Baiker as Judge Curtis Swango, Maddy Brown as Carolyn Bryant, Tyler Burke as Roy Bryant, Colin Callahan as Robert Hodges, Kayla Franklin as Mamie Till-Bradley, Darren Jones as Mose Wright, Ron David Lipski as the Clerk, Andy Luther as district attorney Gerald Chatham, Matt Miles as J.W. Milam, Lyle Miller as Chester Miller, John Henry Roberts as John Edward Cothran/Peter Hackus, Matt Rosin as George Smith, Steve Silver as defense attorney J.J. Breland, Jamie Vann as H.C. Stride and Mysun Aja Wade as Willie Reed.
The full Trial in the Delta creative team is G. Riley Mills and Willie Round, co-adaptors; Anthony Moseley and Dana Anderson, co-directors; Emmy Weldon, scenic and video design; Alexandria Richardson, costume design; Phoenix Ballentine, lighting design; Warren Levon, sound design; Shawn Wallace, original music; Mariah Bennett, props design; Dre Robinson, production manager; Isabella Noe, technical director; and, Teniyah Hall, assistant stage manager. The producer of Trial in the Delta is Collaboraction’s interim managing director, Carla Stilwell.
This presentation of Trial in the Delta: The Murder of Emmett Till is made possible in part thanks to generous support from: AV Chicago, Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events, Joseph and Bessie Feinberg Foundation, Illinois Arts Council Agency, Monahan Law Group, LLC, Rotary Club of Naperville and Pinnacle Performance Company.
Watch the teaser video for Trial in the Delta: The Murder of Emmett Till.
About Emmett Till
Emmett Till (via Wikimedia)
The murder of 14-year-old Emmett Till in 1955 brought national attention to the racial violence and injustice prevalent in the deep south. While on a trip from his hometown, Chicago, to visit relatives in Money, Mississippi, Till went to the Bryant store with his cousins, and may have whistled at Carolyn Bryant, a white woman. Her husband, Roy Bryant, and brother-in-law, J.W. Milam, kidnapped and brutally murdered Till, dumping his body in the Tallahatchie River.
A jury of 12 white men later decided that Milam and Bryant were not guilty of murdering Till, though there was plenty of evidence that they did and they later admitted they killed him in an interview in Look Magazine. The press coverage and murder trial galvanized a generation of young African Americans to join the Civil Rights Movement out of fear that such an incident could happen to friends, family, or even themselves.
The longstanding disappearance of the transcript of the State of Mississippi vs. Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam, along with most of the courthouse documentation, is one of the great mysteries of a case that helped galvanize the civil rights movement and continues to garner worldwide attention a half-century later. Its absence would be more than a historical curiosity. It could also hamstring efforts to further prosecute the case. In 2005, a copy of the transcript surfaced and made its way to the F.B.I and led to reopening the case. Hopes, however, were dashed in December, 2021, when the Department of Justice closed the case again without bringing justice.
Trial in the Delta: The origin story
Trial in the Delta premiered in February 2022 as a tele-play, co-produced with and recorded by NBC5 Chicago as the second episode of anchor Marion Brooks’ investigative series, The Lost Story of Emmett Till. The transcript re-surfaced in 2005, Brooks found it online while conducting research for her series, so she turned to Collaboraction to create and film a staged reading drawn directly from the transcript in NBC’s studios.
The Lost Story of Emmett Till: Trial in the Delta premiered at the Gene Siskel Film Center on May 11, 2022, before debuting with multiple broadcasts on NBC5 Chicago. Days after filming on a closed set in NBC’s Chicago studio, Trial in the Delta was re-staged live on a minimal set, two shows only, at The DuSable Black History Museum and Education Center.
The full tele-play remains free to watch on NBCChicago.com and the NBC5 Chicago app, and is available for streaming on Peacock, Apple TV, Roku and Amazon Fire. Ultimately, the NBC5/Collaboraction co-production The Lost Story of Emmett Till: Trial in the Delta went on to win a 2022 Chicago/ Midwest Emmy Award for "Human Interest - Long Form.”
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Collaboraction:
Changing the map and removing barriers within the theater industry
Collaboraction is a 25-year-old, ethno-diverse company that uses theater and performance to incite social change on Chicago’s most critical issues. Collaboraction produces live and digital performances, anti-racism workshops, and youth programs that incite change and grow equity in Chicago.
Since its founding in 1996, Collaboraction has pushed artistic boundaries working with more than 4,000 artists to bring over 100 productions and events to more than 150,000 unique audience members, and has inspired measurable positive change on social justice in Chicago and beyond.
Collaboraction’s work includes Trial in the Delta: The Murder of Emmett Till, SKETCHBOOK, PEACEBOOK, Moonset Sunrise, The Light Youth Ensemble, Crime Scene, Forgotten Future and Gender Breakdown. In addition to live performances, community building and video production, the company centers and presents its work in Chicago neighborhoods historically overlooked like Englewood, Austin and Lawndale.
In 2022, Collaboraction was one of the first theaters in the U.S. to be certified by On Our Team, a national trade organization advocating for pay equity and transparency in the live theater industry.
Collaboraction, under the leadership of Artistic Director Anthony Moseley and Producer and Interim Managing Director Carla Stillwell, has been acknowledged for innovation and inclusivity by using theater as a tool for social change with numerous awards including the Foster Innovation Award from Chicago’s Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events, the Multi-Racial Unity Award from the First Unitarian Church-Chicago, a Stand For the Arts Award from Comcast and OvationTV, and an Otto Award from New York’s Castillo Theatre.
Collaboraction is supported by The Chicago Community Trust, the National Endowment for the Arts, Illinois Humanities, Paul M. Angell Foundation, Marc and Jeanne Malnati Family Foundation, Joseph and Bessie Feinberg Foundation, the Bayless Family Foundation, Spreading Hearts, AV Chicago, the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events, and the Illinois Arts Council, a state agency.
For more information, visit collaboraction.org, or follow the company on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok or YouTube.
About The DuSable Black History Museum and Education Center
The DuSable Black History Museum and Education Center, a Smithsonian Affiliate, is the nation’s first independent Museum dedicated to the collection, preservation and study of the history and culture of African Americans and people of African descent. For more information, please visit dusablemuseum.org and follow @dusablemuseum.