WHEN WE GET THERE

SYNOPSIS

It was Rose Shapiro, a Jewish widow, and Dawn Jacks — an idealistic African American teenager — to get her mother, Mary Jacks and handyman Terrance Witt, to pile in Rose’s 1960s Buick and drive to Selma, Alabama. The reason? Join Dr. Martin Luther King’s march from the Edmund Pettus Bridge to Montgomery, the state capital to demand voting rights from Negroes from Gov. George Wallace himself. After Rose’s husband, Nathan, a diamond merchant and racketeer, passed on, his employee Terrance, a WWII Army vet, remains loyal to and employed by Rose as her chauffeur/handyman. So does Mary, Rose’s maid, in a home located the solidly White, middle-class town of Ridgewood, New Jersey. Gassed up, sandwiches and drinks packed, Green Book at the ready, and hearts full of hope, the foursome heads South even as America, particularly the South, remains hostile to its Black and Jewish citizens. Dawn takes the wheel. Rose rides shotgun, and clutching the purse strings. Excited, Dawn encourages optimism, and Mary sings to cover her trepidation. Encounters with racists — a White gas station attendant and a state trooper — reveal the dangers of “traveling-while-Black-with-a-Jewishwoman-in-the-back-seat.” Arriving in Selma, the four join hands and head into the march. Multiple tear gas bombs explode. Stench and smoke fill the stage. Sounds of police dogs attacking, billy clubs smashing heads, screams and chant-like prayers are heard. Injured, the four run for their lives. This day will live in infamy as Bloody Sunday.

Act II opens as the four — injuries oozing blood, dazed, disoriented — stumble back to the car and make their way back north. The show ends as a new, if fragile, understanding of what a family — and just maybe what a country — can be.

Notes

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