The killing of 14-year-old Emmett Till in summer 1955 was a spark for the blaze that would become the Civil Rights movement. It’s said that Rosa Parks was thinking of Till when she refused to give up her seat on the bus in Montgomery, Ala., later that year.
St. Paul’s Penumbra Theatre told the horrifying, heartbreaking story in 2014 in “The Ballad of Emmett Till.”
Ifa Bayeza’s powerful play about the black boy from Chicago who went to visit relatives in Mississippi and was killed after he whistled at a young white woman, focused on Till.
“It gave Emmett his youth — the life and vibrancy there,” says Talvin Wilks, who directed “Ballad.”
Wilks is back at Penumbra at the helm of Bayeza’s follow-up to “Ballad.” “Benevolence” is the second in a trilogy centered on Till, though he’s not in this production.
“It is about Emmett Till and it isn’t,” Wilks says. “He never really appears. He’s present, but not seen.
“This is not the end of the story,” he adds. “This is the beginning of trying to change the culture entrenched in our society.”
“Benevolence” looks at what happened around Till’s killing, told through a white couple (Carolyn and Roy Bryant — the woman Emmett whistled at and her husband, who abducted the teen and was tried for his murder) and a black couple (Clinton and Beulah Melton).
While Emmett Till’s name and story are known, there was “a second story the community had to navigate in the same way,” says Wilks. Clinton Melton was a black man who lived with his wife and five children in the same Mississippi county where Till died.
Melton was a gas station attendant who was killed by a white man 2½ months after Till died. The man charged with his murder, Elmer Kimbel, was acquitted in the same courtroom where the men charged with killing Till were tried and found not guilty.
The same courtroom, just five months later.
There were witnesses in the Melton shooting, including the white gas-station owner. It was daylight. Kimbel (who had a suspicious wound) said he shot in self-defense, but no gun or bullets were found.
Melton was a “beloved young black man raising a family,” Wilks says. But the jury of five white men found Kimbel not guilty.
And in an odd twist, Kimbel was a pal of J.W. Milam, who was tried along with Roy Bryant in the Till case. According to some accounts, Kimbel was driving Milam’s car when he went to the gas station.
“Benevolence” looks at how the characters involved went on with their lives, Wilks says.
“Ballad” made its regional premiere at Penumbra. Thursday’s opening of “Benevolence” will be the play’s world premiere.
When Wilks directed “The Ballad of Emmett Till,” he was living in New York. He had met Lou Bellamy, Penumbra’s founder and former artistic director, years earlier while Wilks was at Crossroads Theatre Company in New Jersey. He calls Crossroads, a major African-American theater company, his training ground.
“Ballad” was Wilks’ first work for African-American theater company Penumbra. The St. Paul theater had just emerged from a hiatus brought on by financial struggles in 2014, and Bellamy had just turned the reins over to his daughter, Sarah.
“They really embraced me and brought me into the family,” Wilks says.
Wilks’ career has taken him from Seattle to New York. A playwright, actor, director and dramaturge who worked on a lot of freelance projects, Wilks is known for his collaboration with poets, choreographers, jazz musicians and others.
“I created my own season,” he says.
Wilks had been considering leaving New York (“I didn’t have to be in New York to work in New York”) a couple of years ago, when he was contacted about teaching at the University of Minnesota.
“Newly based in Minnesota,” Wilks is an associate professor in the department of theater and dance at the U. The move has allowed him to get back to his roots as a playwright, he says. Pillsbury House Theatre in Minneapolis will present Wilks’ “Jimmy and Lorraine: A Musing” in the fall.
Wilks can’t help but compare Emmett Till to Trayvon Martin, the 17-year-old black student who was shot and killed in Florida in 2012. Till went to buy gum; Martin went to buy Skittles.
“It’s cultural memory we step into,” Wilks says. “It’s important we step into it.
“Collective interest, collective consciousness and collective change. That’s why we do the plays.”
If you go
- What: “Benevolence” — the second part of playwright Ifa Bayeza’s trilogy connected to Emmett Till
- When: Opens Thursday, Feb. 14, runs through March 10
- Where: Penumbra Theatre, 270 N. Kent St., St. Paul
- Tickets: $40-$15; 651-224-3180 or penumbratheatre.org