The Civilities, a Staged Reading
The Civilities, a Staged Reading
Written by Kyle Bass
Directed by
FSC presents a staged reading of a new play by Kyle Bass, author of Possessing Harriet and TOLIVER & WAKEMAN. This reading is presented as part of a 2024 commissioning grant awarded to FSC by the New York State Council on the Arts.
Set in a small town in Upstate New York in 1936 (the 75th anniversary of the beginning of the Civil War), The Civilities introduces Blessah Hart, a dynamic young Black graduate student of History and Anthropology at Cornell University, and M. Silas Jackson, an elderly white poet and Confederate army veteran who has resided in the North for 60 years. Conducting research for her graduate thesis on the narratives of surviving Confederates living in the North, Blessah reaches out to “son of the South” poet Jackson, whose poetry critiques and romanticizes the Old South, and whose current project—a long poem about the recent destruction by fire of a famed upstate NY abolitionist’s mansion—is rich with metaphors about the nation’s past and enigmatic clues about the poet’s own history. As researcher and subject, Blessah and Silas form an unlikely connection. But their relationship is tested as Blessah’s perceptive nature leads her to “read between the lines” of Silas’s work, prompting questions that strain his patience.
When Blessah travels to Silas’s hometown in the South to uncover the missing pieces of Silas’s story, neither the historian nor the poet is prepared for the agonizing revelation research uncovers: a discovery linking them to a history of bondage, birthright, bloodshed, and to the abolitionist’s mansion destroyed by fire, compelling a reckoning with the wounds of the past, the wrongs of the present. For the author of Possessing Harriet and Toliver & Wakeman, The Civilities explores profound questions about heritage, race, civility, and the tension between history and literature as two means of conveying truth.
Kyle Bass is also the author of the play Tender Rain, which premiered at Syracuse Stage in May 2023. Salt City Blues which was produced at Syracuse Stage in in 2022, Citizen James, or The Young Man Without a Country, about a young James Baldwin, which was commissioned by Syracuse Stage, has streamed nationally since 2021, and has been optioned for an international feature-length film, and Possessing Harriet, which premiered at Syracuse Stage in 2018, was subsequently produced at Franklin Stage Company, at the East Lynne Theater Company, and is published by Standing Stone Books. His libretto for Libba Cotten: Here This Day, an opera based on the life of American folk music legend Libba Cotten, was commissioned by The Society for New Music. With National Medal of Honor recipient Ping Chong, Kyle is the co-author of Cry for Peace: Voices from the Congo, which premiered at Syracuse Stage and was subsequently produced at La MaMa Experimental Theatre in New York. Kyle also worked with Ping Chong on Tales from The Salt City, which premiered at Syracuse Stage. Kyle is the co-author of the original screenplay for the film Day of Days (Broad Green Pictures, 2017) and is a three-time recipient of the New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship (for fiction in 1998, for playwriting in 2010, and for screenwriting in 2022), a finalist for the Princess Grace Playwriting Award, and a Pushcart Prize nominee. As dramaturg, Kyle worked with acclaimed visual artist and MacArthur “Genius” Fellow Carrie Mae Weems on her theatre piece Grace Notes: Reflections for Now, and he was the script consultant on Thoughts of a Colored Man, which premiered at Syracuse Stage in 2019 and opened on Broadway in 2021. His plays and other writings have appeared in the journals Callaloo and Stone Canoe, among others, and in the anthology Alchemy of the Word: Writers Talk about Writing. Kyle is an assistant professor in the Department of Theater at Colgate University, where he was the 2019 Burke Endowed Chair for Regional Studies. Previously, he was faculty in the MFA Creative Writing program at Goddard College, taught playwriting in the Department of Drama, and theater and dramatic literature courses in the Department of African American Studies at Syracuse University, and playwriting at Hobart & William Smith Colleges. The Susan P. Stroman Visiting Playwright at the University of Delaware and the Flournoy Visiting Playwright at Washington & Lee University, Kyle holds an MFA in playwriting from Goddard College, is a proud member of the Dramatists Guild of America and is represented by the Barbara Hogenson Agency. A descendant of African people enslaved in colonial New England and in the American South, Kyle lives and writes in central upstate New York where his family has lived free and owned land for nearly 225 years. He thanks Colgate University for the support of his creative research. And he is indebted to his cousin, historian Diane Ciccone, whose research into their family history remains a gift and unceasing source of inspiration.
SHOWTIMES
Friday, September 12 @7:30 pm
Sunday, September 14 @3:00 pm
General Seating
FREE ADMISSION
Franklin Stage Company is an admission-free theater that depends on the generosity of our audience and donors. The suggested donation is $25/seat, but whatever donation you can afford, you are welcome here.