THE BALLAD OF EMMETT TILL

Full-length Drama

by Ifa Bayeza

5W, 8M

Original songs by Ifa Bayeza.

THE BALLAD OF EMMETT TILL is the first play in The Till Trilogy,  a three-play cycle exploring the epic saga of Emmett Till and the birth of the modern Civil Rights Movement. 

With music and magic, Ifa Bayeza’s Edgar Award-winning drama recounts the last two weeks of Emmett Till's life on his journey from Chicago to Money, Mississippi in 1955. We meet a young man with boisterous energy and boundless charm whose fateful encounter with Caroline Bryant changes his life and our country forever.

THAT SUMMER IN SUMNER

Full-length Drama

by Ifa Bayeza

3W, 7M

THAT SUMMER IN SUMNER is the middle drama in The Till Trilogy, a three-play cycle exploring the epic saga of Emmett Till. While the first play, The Ballad of Emmett Till, is the story of the boy, That Summer in Sumner explores the 1955 trial of his killers. While drawing upon trial transcripts, contemporaneous news accounts, and the abundant photographic and media imaging, the play is not a docudrama, but my imagined interpretation of behind the scenes events from the perspective of three African American journalists covering the trial and from Emmett, himself, his ghost, his cipher, his Kah, coming to grips with what has happened to him.  

BENEVOLENCE

Full-length Drama

by Ifa Bayeza

4W, 7M

BENEVOLENCE is the third play in The Till Trilogy, exploring the epic saga of Civil Rights icon Emmett Louis Till, the Chicago teenager whose fateful trip to Mississippi in the summer of 1955 is believed by many to mark the beginning of the modern Civil Rights Movement.

BENEVOLENCE explores the transformation in the Mississippi Delta in the wake of Emmett’s death, the toll of the legacy of enslavement on the smallest units of our society, the family and individual. From the eyes of two women and the men in their lives, it is an intimate play, a tale of love and loss. Like the land in its time, Benevolence is segregated.

Author

Ifa Bayeza

Ifa Bayeza is an award-winning playwright, director, novelist and educator. Described as “breathtaking,” “staggering,” “extraordinarily lyrical,” and “triumphant,” her literary style and transcendent themes veer from the intimate to the mythic and compel us to re-examine the deeply embedded ideas we attach to race and gender. Plays include The Till Trilogy (The Ballad of Emmett Till, That Summer in Sumner, and Benevolence), reimagining the saga of 1955 Civil Rights icon Emmett Till; String Theory, on the 1839 Amistad slave ship survivors; Welcome to Wandaland, a childhood memoir and Infants of the Spring, adaptedfrom the classic Harlem Renaissance novel. She has written two musicals: the World War I love story, Charleston Olio, a Fred Ebb Award...[FULL BIO]