Local librarians Chris Snell and Sarah Trowbridge will have their moment in the limelight Oct. 5 at 2:30 p.m., when they serve as guest hosts for the Alliance Theatre’s world premiere production of “Native Guard,” an original staging of two-term U.S. Poet Laureate Natasha Trethewey’s Pulitzer Prize-winning poetic work.
In “Native Guard,” originally published in 2006, Trethewey weaves together her deeply personal experiences – as the child of a then-illegal marriage between her black mother and white father living in 1960s Mississippi – with the experience of a soldier in the Native Guard, the first African-American Union troop in the Civil War, charged with guarding white Confederate captives. Years after her mother’s tragic death, Trethewey reclaims her memory, just as she reclaims the voices of the black soldiers whose service has been all but forgotten.
Under the direction of Alliance Theatre artistic director Susan V. Booth, the beautiful words of the poet come alive onstage to tell the affecting story.
Once the story has been told, specially invited guest hosts take the stage for Act II, an open and completely interactive conversation with the audience about what they have just seen and heard. “Native Guard” runs on the Hertz Stage at the Alliance Theatre from September 26 through October 19. The Alliance Theatre is located in Woodruff Arts Center at 1280 Peachtree St. in Midtown Atlanta.
The two librarians’ role as guest hosts for act two of “Native Guard” is the culmination of a conversation with the Alliance Theatre that began in February of this year.
Since then, library director Chris Snell and public services librarian Sarah Trowbridge have provided input to theatre staff on the development of the production, while the Alliance reciprocated by bringing cast member January LaVoy to the library in September to perform excerpts from the work and talk about it with a local audience.
Tickets are now on sale at the Fayette County Public Library for the 2:30 p.m. matinee performance of “Native Guard” on Sunday, October 5. Through a special partnership between the Alliance Theatre and the Friends of the Fayette County Public Library, tickets for this particular performance are available at the discount price of $28 each – a savings of 30 percent off the regular box office rate. A limited number of tickets remain, and these will be sold in-person only at the library, on a strictly first-come, first-served basis. Customers may pay in cash or by personal check.
The Fayette County Public Library is located behind the Fayette County administration complex in downtown Fayetteville, at the southwest corner of Highways 85 and 54. For additional information, please contact the library at 770-461-8841 or visit online at http://www.fayettecountyga.gov/public_library.
