“I think the fact that To Kill a Mockingbird was written by a white person made it much more palatable for people to talk about race, because it was from the white gaze, from the white lens,” Gideon Glick says. But that white perspective limits the novel’s scope, even as it widens the audience for a book about race. It’s also conveniently written from the perspective of a white person, which is likely a significant part of why it was published in the first place, and why it’s reached such acclaim. “I didn't realize how different I would feel performing this story, this black man's story, in front of all these white people who are, you know, yeah, I imagine a lot of them liberal-minded but still benefactors of this system,” Akinnagbe tells Teen Vogue. In the play, when Atticus says the children shouldn’t have to be afraid to walk around where they live, Cal wryly remarks, “Well, let me see if I can find a way to relate to that.” Jackson plays Calpurnia, the Finch family’s maid and maternal figure, a role that has been expanded to have more discussions with Atticus during several of those conversations, she checks him on his white privilege. The Broadway version, to its credit, fills some of those gaps in how the story’s black characters are presented, which is a huge reason cast members like LaTanya Richardson Jackson agreed to be part of the production in the first place. Broadway’s To Kill a Mockingbird has crucial changes. And it’s one that provokes questioning in the way it perpetuates Atticus as a white savior, in the way it presents black people - and in the way people (especially white people) uplift it as the ultimate writing on race and justice. Oprah Winfrey once hailed it “our national novel.” The New Yorker called it “a kind of secular scripture, one of only a handful of texts most Americans have in common.” It’s more than a book: it’s held up almost as a system of thought. Over time, and especially with the influence of actor Gregory Peck’s Atticus Finch in the To Kill a Mockingbird film, the material has become an American cultural reference point. The protagonist is the plucky, endlessly curious Scout Finch, who explains what happened in the town of Maycomb after her father Atticus Finch became the defense attorney for Tom Robinson, a black man who has been wrongfully accused of raping Mayella Ewell, a young white woman. Most recently, screenwriter Aaron Sorkin adapted the novel into an extremely successful Broadway play, where adult actors play the novel’s central children: after beginning its run in 2018, it’s currently the highest-grossing American play in Broadway history.įor those who have been lax about summer reading, the events of To Kill a Mockingbird take place in 1930s small-town Alabama. Since the book was published in 1960, it has been adapted into a 1962 Academy Award-winning film and multiple stage plays it also exists in a different form but with some of the same characters in Lee’s own Go Set a Watchman, released in 2015 before her death the following year.
The show, directed by Bartlett Sher, opened on Broadway in 2018 to rave reviews, with the New York Theatre Guide review reading, "Sorkin and his director Bartlett Sher stage it primarily as a scorching courtroom drama, folding it seamlessly with scenes from Finch's home life as his two worlds collide.Because To Kill a Mockingbird’s legacy is still ongoing.
#Original cast of to kill a mockingbird broadway trial#
With the trial as the centerpiece of this story about the loss of innocence, Scout recalls memories of her father leading up to the trial, and the hatred her family received from their neighbors during and after it. Her father, Atticus, is a lawyer who is representing an innocent Black man in a rape trial in pre-Civil Rights Alabama. To Kill a Mockingbird is based on Harper Lee's novel of the same name, narrated by a six-year-old Scout. Kinnear, a film actor known for As Good as It Gets, You've Got Mail, Little Miss Sunshine, and more, is now making his Broadway debut in the role of Atticus. Baize Buzan will take over the role of Scout Finch from original cast member Celia Keenan-Bolger, who won a Tony Award for the role, and Academy Award nominee Greg Kinnear will replace Tony nominee Jeff Daniels as Atticus Finch as previously announced.īuzan made her Broadway debut in 2018 in the original cast of To Kill a Mockingbird, when she was an ensemble member and the understudy for Scout. All rise! Two new actors will step into the leading roles of Aaron Sorkin's To Kill a Mockingbird stage adaptation from January 5.
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