He aspired to make quality education accessible for all. Arthur Garrity ordered the desegregation of schools on June 21, 1974. Neighborhood icons like activists Mel King on the left and Louise Day Hicks on the right, who headed up the group Restore Our Alienated Rights (R.O.A.R.), take their respective stands. Under the seamless direction of Bensussen, members of the ensemble play multiple characters and move clearly from past to present. Omar Robinson, Elle Borders, Amanda Collins, Marianna Basham and Stacy Fischer in 'Common Ground Revisited.' (Courtesy T Charles Erickson) There were some biting moments where mom, Rachel Tymon (Shannon Lamb), tries to instill the importance of education into her daughter Cassandra (Borders), who is struggling with the constant taunting at Charlestown High, and when Alice McGoff (Amanda Collins) learns that her daughter Lisa (Bassham) has decided to stop protesting desegregation and instead wants to unite students at her school. The assemblage of thespians sheds light on the nation's racial climate through dialogue about the civil rights movement, the Kennedys and Martin Luther King Jr.'s murder, augmented by powerful imagery. The actors helped develop the work through workshops and readings and by offering their own stories, some of which made it into the script. The production boasts an exemplary ensemble that includes such talented locals as Marianna Bassham, Maurice Emmanuel Parent, Karen MacDonald and Elle Borders. In a gray-walled classroom with an American flag, students dissect Lukas' book that centers on the lives of the Divers, white professionals who, for a while, live in the South End the Twymons, a Black family living in a non-gentrified part of the South End and the Irish working-class McGoffs in Charlestown. (The production runs through July 3 at the Calderwood Pavilion's Wimberly Theatre.) The Huntington Theatre Company’s world premiere of ' Common Ground Revisited,' conceived by Obie-Award winners Greenidge and Melia Bensussen, delves into Lukas' Pulitzer Prize-winning narrative through perspectives from a present-day school.

Anthony Lukas' 1986 'Common Ground: A Turbulent Decade in the Lives of Three American Families' is provocative and powerful. But celebrated local playwright Kirsten Greenidge's approach to revisiting the real families and the turbulent tone of Boston in the 1960s and ‘70s detailed in J. (Courtesy T Charles Erickson)īreathing new life into an award-winning, classic tale can prove tricky.

Maurice Emmanuel Parent (foreground) and members of the cast of 'Common Ground Revisited 'at The Huntington Theatre Company's Wimberly Theatre.

Common Ground by J. Anthony Lukas