Spotlight On Creative Team
- Playwright
- Charles Fuller
- Set Design
- Derek McLane
- Costume Design
- Dede Ayite
- Lighting Design
- Allen Lee Hughes
- Sound Design
- Dan Moses Schreier
- Dialect Coach
- Kate Wilson
- Fight Choreographer
- Thomas Schall
- Director
- Kenny Leon
Jump to:
What is the show about?
This 1982 Pulitzer Prize-winning thriller has rocketed back into the spotlight, thanks to this 2020 Tony Award®-winning Best Revival from Roundabout Theatre Company. “This is a play that deserves to be staged regularly all over America—though it’s hard to imagine that it will ever be done better than this. It keeps you guessing all the way to the final curtain” (The Wall Street Journal).
In 1944, on a Louisiana Army base, two shots ring out. A Black sergeant is murdered. The series of interrogations that follows triggers a gripping barrage of questions about sacrifice, service, and identity in America. Broadway’s Norm Lewis leads a powerhouse cast in the show Variety calls “a knock-your-socks-off-drama," directed by Tony winner Kenny Leon.
| WHERE | Army Base, Louisiana |
| WHEN |
1944 |
Who: Meet the Characters
| TECH/SERGEANT VERNON C. WATERS |
a Black Sergeant who manages the baseball team |
| PC MELVIN PETERSON |
a Black man in his late twenties, wearing glasses; a model soldier to the other men |
| CAPTAIN RICHARD DAVENPORT |
a Black lawyer and military officer attached to the 343d Military Police Corps Unit |
| CORPORAL BERNARD COBB |
a Black man in his mid to late twenties, closest to CJ and unmoved by Waters’s death |
| PRIVATE TONY SMALLS |
a Black man in his late thirties; a career soldier |
| PRIVATE C.J. MEMPHIS |
a young Black man from Mississippi; a musician |
| PRIVATE JAMES WILKIE |
a Black man in his early forties, a career soldier, dressed in fatigues from which the stripes have been removed by Waters |
| CORPORAL ELLIS |
a Black soldier who is simply always "spit and polish," thorough and detailed |
| LIEUTENANT BYRD |
a white, spit and polish soldier in his twenties |
| PRIVATE LOUIS HENSON |
a Black man his late twenties or early thirties. Pitcher on the baseball team |
| CAPTAIN CHARLES TAYLOR |
a white man in his mid to late thirties who resents Davenport’s assignment and rank |
| CAPTAIN WILCOX |
a white medical officer |