Dreaming Emmett

Dreaming Emmett is the first play by American writer Toni Morrison. First performed in 1986, the play was commissioned by the New York State Writers Institute at SUNY-Albany. The play's world premier, which was directed by Gilbert Moses, was on January 5, 1986 at Capital Repertory Theatre's Market Theater in Albany, New York. After its first production, Morrison reportedly destroyed all known video recordings of the play and copies of the script (although some critics describe copies existing but not being released by Morrison). Thus, all descriptions of the plot are reconstructed from contemporary reviews.

The play is a historical retelling of the life of Emmett Till, a 14-year-old African-American boy beaten to death in 1955 by a group of white men, and the subsequent trial and acquittal of his killers. Morrison uses Till's story to explore the "contemporary black urban youth['s] disproportionately high rate of death by violence".

In March 1986, Mario Cuomo and Kitty Carlisle Hart presented Morrison with the New York State Governor's Arts Award for Dreaming Emmett and other works.

Development
The play was commissioned by the New York State Writers Institute at SUNY-Albany to commemorate the first celebration of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. The play is often described as Morrison's first attempt at playwriting, though she had written the book and lyrics for New Orleans, a musical that received a six-week workshop production in 1982 and staged readings at New York Shakespeare Festival in 1984.

When asked by an interviewer about her transition to writing plays, she said: "I keep asking Bill Kennedy to find one American who wrote novels first and then successful plays. Just one. And neither he nor I could come up with any one American. Even Henry James was a failure. He tried it three times and each time it was worse than the other. But I feel I have a strong point. I write good dialogue. It's theatrical. It moves. It just doesn't hang there." Morrison wrote the play in the midst of developing her 1987 novel Beloved (which would go on to win the Pulitzer Prize in 1988). Morrison utilized dreams as a framework to tackle the subject, echoing her belief in the cathartic power of dream and nightmare. She selected Gilbert Moses as a director because she considered him to be sympathetic to the material, with a forceful perspective on shaping the play, as opposed to other directors who might be "mere facilitators".

"This area has a strong history of abolitionism that has surfaced over and over again in the literature of Black people. There's an old, established Black community here," Morrison told the Amsterdam News. "This is also a professional, white collar city. it has all the tensions that exist in cities with Blacks and whites living together. Albany wasn't invented by Wall Street, it's not a resort town, it's not a bedroom community. I wanted to do the play here. I needed a certain kind of space in which to start this production. I wanted a community response. New York means theater-goers primarily. I wanted the response of neighborhood people."

Premiere
The public premiere of Dreaming Emmett took place on January 5, 1986. It was followed by a reception at the Steuben Athletic Club. "The reception was nearly over at 7:30 when a beaming Morrison arrived and strode through the room to bravos and applause," said the Albany Times Union. The event included remarks by Morrison, director Gilbert Moses and William Kennedy. "I think the play will make racial as well as theatrical headlines," Kennedy said. "...it raises issues I've never seen raised before." In attendance was Gene Shalit, Willa Shalit, Albany Mayor Thomas Michael Whalen III, SUNY Chancellor Clifton R. Wharton Jr., assemblymember William F. Passannante, publisher Dardis McNamee, and two Broadway producers--Michel Stuart and Barbara Ligeti-Hewlitt, among others.

Production
The production of the play ran at Capital Repertory Theatre from January 5, 1986 to February 2.

Cast

 * Emmett -Joseph C. Phillips
 * Princess - Peggy Cowles
 * Eustace - Mel Winkler
 * George - Herb Downer
 * Ma - Beatrice Winde
 * Major - Frank Stoeger
 * Buck - Larry Golden
 * Tamara - Lorraine Toussaint

Crew

 * Director - Gilbert Moses
 * Scenic and Lighting Designer - Dale F. Jordan
 * Mask Design - Willa Shalit
 * Costume Design - Lloyd K. Waiwaiole
 * Mask/Movement - Constance Valis Hill
 * Mask Design and Construction Assistants - Stacy Morse, Marlene Marda, Shelley Wyant
 * Voice Consultant - Lorraine Toussaint
 * Assistant to Ms. Shalit - Debra Paitchel
 * Composer/Sound Design - Kevin Bartlett
 * Production Stage Manager - Patricia Frey
 * Technical Director - David Yergan
 * Properties Master - Janet Storck
 * Producing Artistic Directors - Bruce Bouchard, Peter Clough

Related events
The Capital District Humanities Program, a co-funder of the production, organized Protest Progress: Black History Through Literature, a series of regional events surrounding Dreaming Emmett, featuring Black writers and guest lecturers.
 * Prophecy and Power of Political Theater - a post-show series at Capital Repertory Theatre included lectures by Gilbert Moses, historian Lerone Bennett Jr., scholar Hortense Spillers and playwright Amiri Baraka.
 * Words of the Black Experience - a lecture series hosted at schools in Albany, Schenectady and Troy included Gwendolyn Brooks, Alvin Poussaint and Toni Cade Bambara.
 * From Slavery to Civil Rights - a three-month reading series of Black authors hosted by libraries throughout the region.

Critical reception
The play received mixed reviews in its initial production, with praise for Morrison's language but criticism of the form and production The play has a unique style and form. Margaret Croyden, in her review of Dreaming Emmett for the New York Times, noted the control of Till's imagination on the play's elements and complex structural motifs, such as a play within a play, and creation of a "non-naturalistic" and "nonlinear" narrative.

Albany critic Martin P. Kelly praised the importance of the work but critiqued "...theatricality that gets between the audience and the theme." Kelly noted good performances and remarked that the play "raises an issue but does not provide intriguing drama. There is no real plot and the characterizations are generally superficial." The Amsterdam News applauded a "first-rate cast" and the "ingenious" direction of Gilbert Moses. Morrison also spoke of the significance of locating the production in Albany.

Other press found it a profound experience. "In the end we are not left with a feeling of completeness, rather we are left with a clearer knowledge of the conflicts and the problems that are continuing on the stage of life. For this I would recommend Dreaming Emmett," said a review in Concordiesis. "A two-act, one-set eight-character intensely theatrical experience, the play has a convoluted plot line that moves across time past and present and unravels like an onion," said The Berkshire Eagle. "Every layer seems necessary to the shape and sense of the play and our reaction to it, but at the end, when all has unraveled, we have nothing solid left to remember or set our minds to rest upon. And this is both the tantalizing strength and the disturbing force of the play's intentions."

Scholar Hortense Spillers, speaking at a post-performance lecture at the theatre in Albany, praised the play, which she noted was not representational of the story of Emmett Till, but an exploration of deeper issues through the use of poetic literary devices and theatrical expressionism. She pointed to the masks as "overwhelming" the play with their shocking reveal and distortion of space, manifesting Till's internal perspectives.

Spillers also recalled her personal connection to the subject, as being close in age to Till (she was born a year later than him) and that his murder was a personal awakening for her. "The killers of Emmett Till are as much objects of myth...as is Emmett himself," she said. The play questions whether either Black or white people can escape from their own mythologies. "We are trapped inside each others dreams, that are in fact a nightmare." The dream metaphor, said Spillers, is central to the play's meaning, and it is a collective one. "We do not dream alone."

Legacy
Members of the production described it as difficult, with tensions between the director and the theatre staff. It was a significant box office success, however, and the theatre's best-selling show that decade.

The show has never again received a full production, though a staged reading was produced at the University of West Georgia in 2020, directed by Daniel Banks.