A massive undertaking

Chris Hanna beamed Sunday night as his first audience for “Line in the Sand” filed into Wells Theatre.

He had labored for more than a year on his play about Massive Resistance, an episode in Norfolk’s history that has rarely been aired in the half-century since it occurred.

When he began, he hadn’t realized all the buried pain it would bring up, as he interviewed 100 people and opened up dialogue into something beyond cocktail-party civility. He hadn’t guessed how challenging the whole process would prove to be.

Hanna, artistic director of the Virginia Stage Company, which is producing the play, embraced Hampton Roads as his new home after arriving in 1982, but he remains a bit of an outsider, having been raised up North. He certainly wasn’t here in the 1950s, when the events of his play came to pass.

Others were, and are still, alive to prod him about getting it right.

In 1958, 151 black teens applied for admission to white schools, and just a few were accepted – dubbed the “Norfolk 17.” That fall, to avoid integration, the state closed six junior high and high schools for more than four months.

That meant some 10,000 white teens were at loose ends, some of them never to return to their hometown schools. The seniors at the three closed high schools, who called themselves the “Lost Class of 1959,” also felt victimized.

Hanna wanted to humanize Massive Resistance. Make it an intimate retelling. So the play visits the office of Mayor Fred Duckworth, who struggles to keep the schools segregated and maintain his power base, and peeks into a home where black parents fret over the treatment their bright son may receive in a white school.

Hanna created a white couple involved in the fight to reopen and integrate the schools, and white schoolgirls with differing opinions about the mixing of the races. He shows black teens in a makeshift school in a church basement, being trained to withstand abuse once the public schools reopen.

Hanna had done months of research, digging into books and papers and interviewing people, before he wrote his first draft last March. Since then, he’s continued to rework the script.

Members of the Norfolk 17 and the Lost Class plan to attend opening night on Friday, poised to assess the truth and balance of his play.

“We’re just going to get up and walk out if it’s not right,” said Mary Jane Harnly Birdsong of Suffolk, a Lost Class member whom Hanna interviewed. “I told him, 'If you don’t get your facts straight, if you don’t tell it the way it was, we will pan your play.’”

“I just hope that he has made some changes,” said Pat Turner of Norfolk, one of the 17. She and Birdsong were among those who saw a reading last May of Hanna’s in-progress play; both felt that version contained inaccuracies, which Hanna told them he would strive to correct.

At a dress rehearsal Sunday night, there was an early tester on the scene. The daughter of Olivia Driver Lindsay, one of the 17, arrived with 15 friends and kin.

“We were excited, and just a little curious how it’s going to be, and how accurate some of the details will be,” said Lisa Lindsay-Shaw of Norfolk. Her mother plans to attend the play on Friday.

Lindsay-Shaw grew up with the story of Massive Resistance and had known some of the main characters in Hanna’s play, including Vivian Carter Mason, a Norfolk woman who helped lead the cause for integration.

She made a big impression on Lindsay-Shaw. Mason had been the first black director in New York’s department of welfare and had been president of the National Council of Negro Women.

As Hanna gave his curtain speech, saying, “This show, as you can imagine, means so much to me,” Lindsay-Shaw got ready to judge “Line in the Sand.”

A week ago, Hanna, 53, sat in his office overlooking Granby Street, contemplating his latest rewrite of a problematic scene. He had created Scene 24, the play’s next-to-last, in response to reactions at the May reading.

It was part of his effort to incorporate more of the pain endured by the 17, he explained, but the scene appeared destined to be misunderstood.

It’s a fantasy scene, the only one in the play, about the death of Mayor Duckworth, who was gunned down on the streets of Norfolk in 1972. In the scene, it’s snowing, musicians are silently playing the “New World Symphony,” and someone is saying something to Duckworth.

The 30-plus alterations of that scene have always involved who is saying what to Duckworth. In mid-January, Hanna said in a lecture hosted by the Norfolk Historical Society that as Duckworth dies, “one of the 17 is there, forgiving him.”

“Tim felt that was not authentic,” said Hanna of Timothy Douglas, the nationally noted director of this production. Hanna respects Douglas, who is black and who directed the world premiere of one of the celebrated “Century Cycle” series of plays by August Wilson centered on the black American experience.

“Tim felt specifically that my creation of the scene was my fantasy as a white man involving my own need to be forgiven,” said Hanna, who said that rang true. “I believe in forgiveness.”

In the scene, he said, “My big question is how does the city move forward genuinely? In my mind, that’s everyone forgiving each other for what happened.

“But we all agree, if Tim doesn’t believe it, I don’t want him to stage it.”

So Hanna tried another version of Scene 24.

He was inspired by a photo illustrating Massive Resistance, showing one of the 17, Louis Cousins, seated by himself, far from the other white students in a Maury High auditorium.

Looking at the photo, he said, “I see two boys sitting alone, and their postures tell me for two different reasons.”

A white teen also sits by himself, two rows back from Cousins. In Cousins’ posture, Hanna said, “I’m seeing someone who is boldly looking forward.” In the other kid, who slumps in his seat, “his body is apologizing for something.

“This is purely my projection. But I’ve written a speech for him saying he wanted to sit next to Louis but he was afraid to. He said he was afraid of what everybody in the class would say about him.

“Instead, he spent the rest of his life worrying about what the world thought about him, because of this photo.” The words are spoken by the grownup boy, dubbed Man.

Hanna had spent two days writing it, “and we got it to a place where we feel very good about it,” he said.

But the director and the 15-member cast wanted to meet with Hanna, and he guessed it was about that scene.

Hanna made his way through the labyrinth of the Virginia Stage offices to a room where actors and the director had gathered.

“It feels a bit like revisionist history,” Douglas, a tall, imposing figure with a deep voice, said to Hanna, “with Man saying I wanted to sit next to the lone colored boy, but didn’t.”

“Well, if you woulda, why didn’t you?” said Caroline Clay, an actress with top Broadway credits who portrays Vivian Carter Mason, of Man.  “There’s just something about it. That’s why I was glad you are who you are,” she said to Hanna, “and allowed us this platform.” Half the actors weighed in with criticisms. Several felt the scene with the mayor should be less focused on Duckworth, more on the 17.

“The leaders we have are these courageous children,” said Ivy Vahanian, who plays a fictional Norfolk socialite. “Right now, Duckworth is the center. He gets the last say.”

Clay said she was unhappy with Duckworth’s “redemption.” Hanna said he didn’t have the mayor’s redemption in mind. “That is not the purpose of this scene,” he said.

“I just feel like Duckworth is beside the point,” Clay said. “He has receded into the past. Into the soil of history.”

“So this is terrific,” Douglas said to the group. “Keep talking. But really, ultimately, Chris has to do it. Personally, I like to keep away from telling Chris what to do.”

After the cast left, Douglas told Hanna he’d like to have the new scene by the next night. Back in his office, Hanna appeared to adjust quickly to the new assignment. “Obviously, I’ve got some work to do,” he said, brightening.

“I’m charged.”

Was he clear about what to write? “It’s a subconscious thing. As I start writing, either it will be clear and come, or it won’t come.”

As he readied himself to begin, the loudspeaker came on. “Would everyone please leave the building? We’ve had a small fire in the scene shop. It’s under control, but would everyone leave the building?”

His eyes widened. Then he slipped on his jacket and headed outdoors, to walk and think about Scene 24.

At Sunday’s final dress rehearsal, it wasn’t just an original drama being presented. “Line in the Sand” inaugurates Virginia Stage’s new-play series called “American Soil,” featuring shows created from local history. Next year, a Kenny Finkle play about Civil War re-enactors will be staged.

It’s a unique genre. With “Line in the Sand,” real people and composite characters are blended, and the resulting show is presented to the community where the stories originated. “It’s not a documentary; it’s a play,” Hanna stressed, though he tried hard to be factual where it’s needed.

“I acknowledge I went into this project tremendously naive about racism in this community, but I feel members of the community have been tremendously naive about the artistic process.”

Some people who lived through it were bothered by the blending of fact and fiction, found in some approaches to theater, including Shakespeare’s history plays.

“So, we’ve all been learning together,” Hanna said.

The predominately black audience for Sunday’s performance reacted with comments like, “That’s right!” and laughter and quiet vocalizations that suggested recognition.

At intermission, Lindsay-Shaw said the play was “pretty powerful and very entertaining. I’m very pleased with the cast and, thus far, the accuracy.

“It’s pretty powerful to take the stories you’ve heard and to visualize it, to see it live, being re-created.” After the show, she headed out to find Hanna, who was in the lobby chatting with patrons. “Awesome!” she told him. “Congratulations!”

“Thank you!” he said robustly. “That means so much to me!”

He was so happy with the responses, he seemed indifferent to the big change that had come to his script just the night before.

His beloved fantasy scene had vanished. Gone.

After watching a run-through on Saturday, he finally saw that the scene “just wasn’t needed. What I realized was the play needed to end exactly where it does.”

With a black teen and a white teen side by side, staring ahead, into the future.

Teresa Annas, (757) 446-2485, teresa.annas@pilotonline.com