Director : Hershell Norwood
Play by  : Romulus Linney
Novel by : Ernest J. Gaines
Location : Mainstage
Featuring:

Dawaun Lawler
Terrell Dickerson
Martha Moultry
Stanley Coleman
Zayne Clayton
Adam Leonard
Michael Hoekstra

A Lesson Before Dying

by Romulus Linney

  Directed by Hershell Norwood

Jefferson, an innocent young Black man, is condemned to death in backwoods Louisiana in 1948. At the trial his lawyer, trying to save his life, called him no more a human being than a hog. In prison, he acts like one, insisting that he will be dragged like that hog to his death in the electric chair. His godmother asks a struggling school teacher to teach him to die like a man. The teacher, Grant Wiggins, faces both Jefferson and himself as execution day arrives.

Ernest J. Gaines’ celebrated novel makes an engrossing, moving, and deeply important play.