Behind the scenes of setting up ‘The Juneteenth Story’ play in Lafayette
LAFAYETTE, La. (KLFY)– Kicking off the Juneteenth celebration, a play called “The Juneteenth Story” will be put on at the Acadiana Center for the Arts. News 10 spoke with some of the key players who created the play and how they prepared for a weekend of performances.
“It’s important that people know what it is and who it is we’re celebrating because you know how they say, ‘If you don’t remember history, you’re doomed to repeat it.’ We don’t want to go back. So we have to move forward,” Twana Benoit, the playwright for “The Juneteenth Story”, said. “In this area that we are in now a lot of people didn’t even know what Juneteenth was. So it’s our jobs as writers, singers, and artists of any kind to pull people in and make them aware and understand why it’s so important because it is.”
This is the third year the play has been performed. Josiah Price, the director, said it is exciting to have returning actors. A new addition this year is a character named Esther, played by Jessika Gayden.
“It’s really cool to see these actors take what my mother Twana Benoit has written and create a fully realized person, a fully realized character out of written words on the page and really that just adds levels because this is a collaborative effort,” Price said.
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Devon Norman, who plays a character named Matthew, drives the idea of revolution in the modern time frame.
“He challenges a lot of traditional beliefs and I think that the most important thing is to recognize from Matthew the importance of the fact that even Juneteenth in itself was based on a lie. It was the lie that people were not told that they were free until two years later of actually the Emancipation Proclamation,” Norman said. “The concept that 7000 Black troops who were just slaves two years prior to that would march up to a Plantation in Galveston, Texas, to let them know that they were free is a concept that we all have to celebrate which is why I believe Opal Lee says that it’s not a Black holiday or a white holiday, but it is an American holiday, because until we were all free, as Matthew says, none of us were truly free.”
Benoit reflected on the love story within Juneteenth and shown in the play.
“I don’t want to give it away,” Benoit said. “They have to come and see it. But if anyone knows me, knows that I love love and that’s what Juneteenth really is about, how I think God loved us so much that he grabbed us and took this out of 400 years of insufferable suffering and he brought us to where we are now and we’re still going forward.”
“It’s been a lot of fun working with this production and working with the other characters and this production just being a family,” Gayden told News 10. “That’s what I love about this. We have cultivated a family within this community and it’s fun to tell this story with all the antics that we have happening and all the music. It’s amazing.”
The play surrounds the Williams family preparing for the annual Juneteenth Festival. In doing so they are immersed in real-life tales of the journey to freedom and highlight the historical significance of Juneteenth, which is now a nationally recognized holiday.
Tickets are $22. Show times are Friday, June 14 at 7:30 p.m. to 10 p.m., Saturday, June 15 at 7:30 p.m. to 10 p.m. The last showing is Sunday, June 16 at 2 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. There will be a special pre-show performance by Leigha Porter`s Fire Expressions Dance Conservatory, and musical guests at each performance: Nebu Neezy, an R&B artist, will perform Friday, Jeremy Benoit, a jazz saxophonist, will be performing Saturday and JJ Callier, a Zydeco artist, will play Sunday.
“I think it’s important that every mother brings their child and that every father brings a son,” Benoit said. “Everybody come. Bring your elders, the elders they’re going to love it. We have antiquity pieces. We have modern-day pieces. The actors and actresses. Oh, my God, they are so amazing. You would think that you’re in Broadway because that’s where we’re going.”
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