"PINEY RIDGE" by La'Chris Jordan

SYNOPSIS

It is 1910 and a race riot in the neighboring town of Thaxton, Virginia has the black and white residents of Piney Ridge on edge. So, when Lilly Sykes, a young white girl from a sharecropping farm is attacked, the racial tensions of the town come bubbling to the surface.  Loosely based on real events, PINEY RIDGE, is a gripping play about race, class, social injustice, and how one moment can change a community forever.

PINEY RIDGE BACKGROUND

Piney Ridge came to me as a gift.  I say, "gift", because there is no other way to describe how this play came to be.  It was a lazy Sunday in 2006 and I was reading an anthology of plays when an image of a young black man suddenly came to me.  The image was so startling that I almost dropped my book. I tried to ignore the vision but it wouldn't go away.  The image of this young man was so vivid that I got chills.  Deep in my soul I knew he was trying to communicate to me.  I put my book down and began to write. I didn't think, I just wrote. I let all the energy from this young  man flow through me.  I was being channeled. The young man soon had a name - Junior - and so, too, did his mother (Bessie) and his sister (Sarah).  Soon, I was writing a play, and before I knew it, had an ending.

Piney Ridge originally was a ten-minute play - a play that was subsequently performed at various playwriting festivals around the country.  When I saw how the piece affected audiences after they saw it, I knew I had a bigger story and began to expand it.  What came out of this process was new play, an interweaving of Junior's story against the backdrop of an actual race riot that occurred in the small town of Thaxton, Virginia in 1907.

Piney Ridge, in its full-length form, was staged in front of a Seattle audience in March and April of 2009.  Like I had hoped, the play touched audiences in a profound way. People couldn't get enough of the story or stop talking about it during the talkbacks. Hopefully, Piney Ridge brought a greater understanding and awareness to a very sensitive and important historical issue.

Thank you for allowing me to share Junior's story with you.

La'Chris Jordan, Playwright