The cast of ‘The Josh White Project’ by Donetta Lavinia Grays, directed by Tamilla Woodard, at the South Carolina New Play Festival. (Photo by Zack Milsaps)
When I attended the third annual South Carolina New Play Festival this August with my husband, Kent Nicholson, it had been 25 years since I stepped foot in the The Warehouse Theatre in Greenville, S.C. It was Kent’s first time touching down in the charming Southern city, located two hours east of Atlanta and one hour south of Asheville, N.C., but for me, it marked a pleasant return.
Over the years, I’ve performed leading roles in world-premiers at Playwrights Horizons, Manhattan Theatre Club, Atlantic Theatre, Roundabout Theatre, Actors’ Theatre of Louisville, among others. I was an original cast member of the Tony-winning play The Humans and I recently traveled the country performing the role of Heidi in the Broadway tour of What the Constitution Means to Me. Kent’s past includes associate producer of musical theatre at Playwrights Horizons, new works director at Theatreworks Silicon Valley, and co-creator of The Uncharted Writers Group at Ars Nova. Currently he serves as the SVP of Acquisitions and Artistic Services for Broadway Licensing Global.
But returning to Greenville took me back decades, to 1999 when I began a year-long actor training intensive Journeyman Program and met new classmate West Hyler.
In 2022, West, along with his work partner and spouse, Shelley Butler, founded the South Carolina New Play Festival, a bustling weekend of new work presentations across five venues up and down Greenville’s Main Street. Kent and I experienced all of this year’s mainstage offerings, including two new musicals, one new play, a piece for young audiences, and the festival’s inaugural commission, a play with music about the legacy of Greenville’s under-recognized superstar, Josh White. Plus we attended talk backs with members of the community, participated in professional panel discussions, enjoyed world class circus acts performing street theatre in the parks, and a cabaret concert featuring Greenville’s very own Tony nominee, Phillip Boykin.
After our trip, we sat down to discuss Kent’s first time at the festival, what it meant for me to return to the festival grounds, and the themes we saw arise throughout the weekend of exciting new works.
CASSIE BECK: So Kent, how’d you like Greenville?
KENT NICHOLSON: It was awesome. I had no idea what to expect. Come to find out, it’s a vibrant town with great restaurants and theatres around every corner. We met so many friendly, generous people, all of whom seem to genuinely love living in Greenville. I was told it was recently voted among the five best places in the U.S. to live by U.S. News and World Report.
What was it like for you being back after 25 years?
CASSIE: When I was there fresh out of undergrad, it was pretty dilapidated on that end of Main Street. The Warehouse Theatre and its parking lot were about it. Now there’s so much great food and local boutiques and small businesses. I loved strolling through the gorgeous Falls Park on the Reedy which runs right along the main drag. It was wild and overgrown back in ‘99. West and I used to climb down the rocks in the summer to moan over our young problems, but now it’s a sprawling, accessible, shady oasis. How fun was it to see circus performers and acrobats on the footpaths? Jaw-dropping! Night life, too, so many places to meet for a cocktail after the shows. And what’s with all those James Beard noms everywhere?
KENT: Shout out to the SCNPF volunteer airport driver, Khailing Neoh of Sum Bar, who owns the first Dim Sum restaurant in town and made an award-winning documentary about her opening.
I also can’t believe that there are five venues for West and Shelley to program readings of new plays and musicals. Really beautiful spaces. I’ve never experienced a general audience that was so engaged in new work.
CASSIE: Complete with all the appropriate gasps and laughs and applause. I remember that moment in The Dark Lady presentation when the young folks collectively let out a shocked gasp, and then the older folks chuckled at their response, and then the young folks giggled back. Can’t beat a three-tiered audience reaction.
You know, I want to ask you about an organic theme I noticed across the festival. So many pieces this year are having a conversation around what one panelist coined the “Culture of Silence,” remember?
KENT: Right. That was during the panel for The Josh White Project.
CASSIE: Which was the first thing we saw, and is the festival’s very first commission.
KENT: Appropriate because Josh White was a Greenville native. We learned from the show and that truly great town hall discussion that followed that he was the first African American artist to play a concert for a sitting president (FDR!), and the first African American recording artist to sell a million albums, but was never mentioned in the local Greenville newspaper.
CASSIE: White’s legacy was mostly forgotten until a local record store owner, who was one of the panelists in fact, started work on reclaiming his recordings and helping to reissue them.
KENT: Now there’s a statue of Josh White in town and Greenville rightly claims him as a native son. But the “Culture of Silence” was so pervasive during his lifetime, his legacy was almost lost.
CASSIE: I love that now there’s this musical being created to continue telling his complete story, especially in regards to his activism and philanthropy as well as his music, artfully crafted by Donnetta Lavinia Grays and directed by Tamilla Woodard. We are true-blue fans of those two artists.
KENT: And they have a three-year commitment from SCNPF, so as the piece develops over the next two years, they will continue to present at the festival.
CASSIE: Did you realize we were sitting directly across the street from the site where one of the scenes took place back in the ‘30s, when Josh White was arrested for a “walking tax”—basically walking while Black? I mean, right outside the lobby doors. I could feel it in my bones.
KENT: As we were exiting, an audience member turned to me and said, “I’ve lived here my whole life, and I’m gonna go buy all his music tomorrow”.
CASSIE: Ooooh, and then there was The Dark Lady, the new musical by Sophie Boyce and Veronica Mansour. It features someone slightly more well known, William Shakespeare, but this piece proposes a world in which Shakespeare’s plays were actually ghost-written by Emelia Bassano, a contemporary of Will’s and the first woman to publish a book of original poetry. That show is talking about the silencing of female voices throughout history.
KENT: Immediately made me question how many geniuses have been lost to that silence?
CASSIE: Sarna Lapine directed that with Fred Feeney as music director. And, woah, Fred worked hard for the people! He was mixing and layering and doing all kinds of crazy stuff right there on the stage.
KENT: The level of producing and talent and sound mixing was super impressive. Same with All the World’s a Stage by Adam Gwon. A very different show with different needs, equally seamlessly presented and directed by Jonathan Silverstein with music direction by Andrea Grody.
CASSIE: That also brought this notion of a “Culture of Silence” home. Set in a Southern town in 1996, a closeted gay teacher who loves the theatre tries to help a lonely student win a drama competition.
KENT: The musical, in my opinion, quite deftly grapples with censorship and bigotry. The real takeaway for me was how, by remaining silent, we lose the opportunity to bridge gaps and create empathy. That it almost certainly requires personal sacrifice to break that silence, but it’s worth it because we lose so much otherwise.
CASSIE: I saw an audience member weeping after the show and learned that they were a teacher dealing with book bans at this very moment.
KENT: Unfortunately, it still resonates. But also, we know one person can make a difference, like the show quietly demonstrates.
CASSIE: Or two people, like in Jack Brasch’s Trip Around the Sun, directed by the amazing Shelley Butler, who is also the festival’s artistic director. I was laughing out loud.
KENT: Oh, me too. The laughter was raucous, not silent at all.
CASSIE: Right, more of a willful silence between the two senior characters in that piece. They’re having a delightfully complicated conversation while drinking many margaritas and quoting their favorite Jimmy Buffet lyrics.
KENT: Their inability to emotionally cope with their mortality leads to isolated decision making. It’s only when the issue is forced that they are able to break the silence—
CASSIE: And are willing to sacrifice—
KENT: Yes, and move towards some kind of future together.
CASSIE: Dude, I wanted a margarita so bad after that show.
KENT: Wish they would’ve sold them in the lobby. Finally, the festival of readings ended with the theatre for young audiences show, Stuntboy, in the Meantime. The writers, Melvin Tunstall III and Greg Dean Borowsky, adapted a graphic novel about a young boy who has anxiety over his parent’s separation and divorce.
CASSIE: But, they don’t even say the word “divorce” until the end of the piece. Again, it’s the silence. Trying to hide it from their son only makes it worse for everyone.
KENT: I saw parents who were moved by it as much as the children they brought with them. It was directed by Banji Aborisade with musical direction by Nick Wilders.
CASSIE: I’m so glad I got to return to Greenville, walking with everyone across town with our festival tote bags and badges, seeing great stuff. I loved it. All the pieces bounced off of each other and reflected the place in which they were being performed and created real conversations.
KENT: What is it you always say, Cassie, about artists as first responders?
CASSIE: That artists are our cultural first responders. We strap on the gear, jump into the fray, and emerge from the rubble to share what we’ve gathered.
I think the festival is gonna snowball, don’t you? I know the pieces were skillfully selected by West and Shelley with that community in mind, but the panel conversations and themes revealed across the weekend are also a part of the national discussion.
KENT: And I think the professional community will be better for it. I see a future where theatremakers across the country are rubbing shoulders with Greenville’s enthusiastic audience, where people gather to see a critical mass of new work—maybe to take it to their own communities, or to meet new writers and other artists. I hope the festival can also keep that local core audience strong. Since it’s rare to sit in a theatre with people so engaged in staged readings.
CASSIE: Right, what did you overhear that one audience member say to their friend?
KENT: They said, “I really love a play reading. I can use my imagination.”
CASSIE: Me too.
KENT: Me three.
Cassie Beck (she/her) is a professional actor based out of New York who specializes in new work. @cassiebeckster
