First Rehearsal Plan

Group Activity: Whisper Down the Lane:

Ask for minimum two-three volunteers (in production, these would ideally be the actors playing reporter roles), who will then step outside the game momentarily to be reporters
The rest of the cast and participants will stand in a line.
The person on one end is the “detective.” I will whisper a piece of (real) evidence to the detective, who will whisper it to the person next to them until the message has reached the last person in line, the “prosecutor”
- Whispers are one-and-done. No one should repeat their message, and messages should be passed on as heard.
The prosecutor will announce the final message out loud. Once heard, our reporters will have a short time (<1 min) to write a gripping headline about that message. All will vote on the headline they’d pay money to read.

Presented Info:

Intro to world of the play:
- News media was the way to understand what was happening and was also prime source of entertainment
- This trial was incredibly personal for almost everyone in the city
  - White poor: Mary was one of them, and was killed by the symbol of everything keeping them down (wealthy, Yankees, industry, Jews)
  - African-Americans: a complete anomaly that reminded them of the unfair ways they were treated (numerous references to lynching/assumptions of black guilt with Newt Lee, Dorsey’s comment that another “negro isn’t enough his time”)
  - Jews: limits of assimilation, especially for Lucille
Intro to the project of the play: how did we get from beginning (circumstantial evidence at best) to end (mob justice, lynching)
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