For fifty-three years Zora Neale Hurston’s Polk County lay unproduced, unpublished, and largely forgotten . In 1997 it was rediscovered at the Library of Congress and is now being brought to life by McCarter Theatre in an adaptation by Kyle Donnelly and Cathy Madison. As in her more famous works (Mule Bone, Their Eyes Were Watching God) Hurston, along with co-author Dorothy Waring, has painted a literary portrait of black life in the rural South. The McCarter production of Polk County defies categorization; it synthesizes authentic early blues songs with new compositions and integrates this musical score into a vibrant theatrical collage that illuminates the joys and trials of a tight community of workers in a sawmill camp in Polk County, Florida in the early 20th century. Hurston’s significance as an anthropologist, folklorist, writer and shaper of the Harlem Renaissance is manifest in this rediscovered gem, which takes us on a journey as full of humor, hardship and faith as the lives of the characters themselves.

Within the pages of this guide, you and your students will find information that puts the play in a cultural context as well as a behind-the-scenes glimpse at the artists and the process of bringing this unique piece to life. Each piece of material has been carefully selected to help enrich your theater experience and engage your students' interests in every aspect of this theatrical journey. If you have further questions or comments about this guide or the performance, please contact Steven Michael Borowka, McCarter Education Associate, at (609) 258-8288.

The Visual and Performing Arts are considered Core Curriculum areas for the New Jersey State Department of Education. This production of Polk County is designed to give your students exposure to the specific Core Curriculum Standards listed below.

Polk County and Curriculum Standards

This production of Polk County and the related study materials will provide students with specific knowledge and skills to address the following Core Curriculum Content Standards in the Arts:

1.1	All students will acquire knowledge and skills that increase aesthetic awareness in dance, music, theatre, and visual arts.
1.3	All students will utilize arts elements and arts media to produce artistic products and performances.
1.4	All students will demonstrate knowledge of the process of critique.
1.5	All students will identify the various historical, social, and cultural influences and traditions which have generated artistic accomplishments throughout the ages and which continue to shape contemporary arts.

This production of Polk County also addresses the following Core Curriculum Standards in Language Arts Literacy and Social Studies:

3.2	All students will listen actively in a variety of situations to information from a variety of sources.
3.3	All students will write in clear, concise, organized language that varies in content and form for different audiences and purposes.
3.4	All students will read various materials and texts with comprehension and critical analysis.
6.2	All students will learn democratic citizenship through the humanities, by studying literature, art, history and philosophy, and related fields.
6.7	All students will acquire geographical understanding by studying the world in spatial terms.

This study guide enables teachers and leaders to explore drama as a mode of learning. Adding drama to the classroom is an active, process-orientated approach to education, in which the teacher and student interact together.
Drama-in-Education seeks to synthesize the activities of creative drama, arts-based curricula and theater conventions into experiences aimed at developing imagination, awareness of self and others, aesthetic taste and life skills. Often these goals are achieved through the examination of a particular theme or topic, which contributes to critical thinking about the world in which we live. By providing structures and contexts, which both excite the interest of participants and call for creative problem-solving, Drama-in-Education promotes deeper thinking about a wide variety of issues.
This guide has been designed for teachers to utilize drama methods in an exploration of the themes and situations presented in the play. We encourage you to adapt these lessons and activities to your individual teaching situations, and thereby to discover the importance and power of drama in the classroom.
The questions and activities throughout this guide are designed to help students anticipate the performance and then to build on their impressions and interpretations after attending the theater. While most of the exercises provide specific instructions, please feel free to adapt these activities to accommodate your own teaching strategies and curricular needs.

By Zora Neale Hurston and Dorothy Waring
Adapted by Kyle Donnelly and Cathy Madison
Original music and music direction by Chic Street Man
Directed by Kyle Donnelly

CAST
	Eric L. Abrams As "Quarters Boss"		Mississippi Charles Bevel As "Few Clothes"
	Carl Cofield As "Sop-The-Bottom"		Clinton Derricks-Carroll As "My Honey"
	Doug Eskew As "Stew Beef"		Perri Gaffney As "Dicey"
	Deidre Goodwin As "Ella Wall"		Gabrielle Goyette As "Laura B."
	Lynda Gravátt As "Bunch"		Kevin Jackson As "Lonnie"
	Marc Damon Johnson As "Box-Car"		Michael Keck As "Do-Dirty/Music Captain"
	Aliza Kennerly As "Maudella"		Kecia Lewis As "Big Sweet"
	Rudy Roberson As " Nunkie"		Bill Sims, Jr. As "Preacher/Musician"
	Tiffany Thompson As " Leafy Lee"

PRODUCTION TEAM
Thomas Lynch	-	Set Designer
Michael Krass	-	Costume Designer
Allen Lee Hughes	-	Lighting Designer
Karin Graybash	-	Sound Designer
Dianne McIntyre	-	Choreographer
Alison Cote	-	Production Stage Manager

 

It is the 1930s at the Lofton Lumber Yard in Polk County, Florida. In the community of African-American sawmill workers no one is more respected than Big Sweet, a tough woman who fights hard to defend and protect those she loves. Her sweetheart, Lonnie, is a dreamer who spends the majority of his free time making music with Big Sweet and his close friend My Honey. My Honey, like most of the men at the mill, avoids committed relationships with women as he floats from place to place. He also avoids the nasty Dicey, a woman who is passionately in love with him and who insists that he belongs to her.
Early one morning, Big Sweet roughs up a gambler who has cheated Lonnie out of his money. While Big Sweet understands that Lonnie’s gentle nature keeps him from fighting, she can put the fear of God into any man and is known around the sawmill camp for her fierce temper and propensity to take justice into her own hands. Big Sweet’s actions have not gone unnoticed by the Quarters Boss and he warns her that if her behavior continues he will have to force her out.

Just before the men return from work, a young stranger named Leafy Lee arrives. She has been instructed to ask for a woman named Bunch who, she is told, will have a room for her. The women have a few laughs at Leafy’s expense, led by Dicey, who feels instantly jealous of Leafy. Eventually Big Sweet meets Leafy for herself and Leafy explains that she has come to Polk County to learn how to sing the blues. Big Sweet takes an immediate liking to Leafy Lee and invites Leafy to stay with her and Lonnie for a while. Dicey warns the other women that a pretty young woman like Leafy can only be trouble and that Leafy has undoubtedly come here to steal the men away. Leafy, however, confides in Big Sweet that, in fact, she has never been with a man. In addition to her desire to learn to sing, Leafy is looking for her father, a white Polk County worker, from whom she has been estranged for most of her life. Big Sweet resolves to look after Leafy.

That night Leafy meets some of the men and she is immediately taken with My Honey. My Honey, in return, notices Leafy and falls in love with her. Along with Big Sweet, Lonnie, and many of their neighbors, My Honey introduces Leafy to the blues and she flatters him by remarking that his guitar picking would be a big hit in New York. As the days pass, Leafy becomes one of the family at the mill. Not long after, My Honey asks Leafy to marry him.

The engagement of Leafy and My Honey infuriates Dicey who calls on her friend, Ella Wall, to help her devise a plan to get rid of Leafy and Big Sweet once and for all. The first step of this plan involves the Quarters Boss, who has always had his eye on Big Sweet and the fights that she picks. One day the Quarters Boss, approaches Big Sweet, admonishing her for starting trouble in the living quarters. He tells her in no uncertain terms that she is to leave by the next payday.

Big Sweet is not easily intimidated by anyone, but the threat of having to leave against her will requires her immediate attention. She consults with Lonnie and the others and soon Lonnie has talked the Boss out of his strict demand. Unfortunately, however, Ella, Dicey and their new accomplice Nunkie have not given up on their plot for revenge. Ella has knowledge of voodoo and can use it to cast spells. Dicey and Ella plan an attack on the wedding celebration of Leafy and My Honey. The plan is almost successful, but is ultimately foiled by Big Sweet. As the wedding ceremony continues, Dicey is dragged away by the Quarter Boss, and Big Sweet, Lonnie, My Honey and Leafy announce that they will be leaving the saw mill of their own will – to find a new home up north in New York.

CHARACTER PROFILES
BIG SWEET-	BIG SWEET is a strong handsome woman who is a leader in the sawmill community. She is fiercely protective of those she loves and she doesn’t hesitate to threaten those who cross her. She has earned the respect of most of the other characters and is one of the few women in the camp to maintain a permanent romantic relationship. “See? That’s how so many lies gets out on me. They twist theyselves all up and dies ugly, and then folks swears I kilt them like that.”
DICEY LONG-	DICEY LONG is an angry woman who is envious of any woman who has more than she does. She is especially jealous of Big Sweet and is motivated by a sense of vengeance toward her. She chases My Honey around, convinced that he is her sweetheart. “They’ll say, ‘There she is! That’s Dicey, the one that kilt so many folks….She’ll kill you without a doubt. Slice you too thin to fry.’ Then My Honey and a whole heap of mens will be pulling after me. I’m going to scorn him then. Tell him to come around another day. I’ll be Miss Dicey Long, with finger rings and things.”
LONNIE-	LONNIE is a worker and Big Sweet’s longtime companion. He is a soft spoken man with a kind and gentle heart. Lonnie is a dreamer and this distinguishes him from the other men at the camp. “How come we got to have all this disturbment? How come everything can’t go on nice and friendly?”
LEAFY LEE-	LEAFY LEE comes to Polk County from up north, hoping to learn how to sing the blues. She is young, innocent and pretty and she quickly captures the attention of most of the men at the camp. “Folks always told me I could sing, and I ever wanted to sing like Ethel Waters.”
MY HONEY-	MY HONEY is a good-looking young man who spends all of his free time picking his guitar and hanging out with Lonnie. He is a confirmed bachelor until Leafy catches his eye. She recognizes his musical talent immediately. “Oh, she just joking me. I just fools with this box. Nobody wouldn’t be fool enough to pay money to hear me pick a box.”
QUARTERS BOSS-	The QUARTERS BOSS is responsible for keeping order in the Negro quarters. He is aware that Big Sweet is trouble and keeps his eye on her. “Big Sweet lumps your heads, and kicks your behinds for you, and you all lie and make out you don’t know who done it. How can I keep order like that?”
ELLA WALL-	ELLA WALL has been kicked out of the camp and is now the friend of Dicey Long. Because she practices voodoo and entertains the affections of the men of the camp, she fancies herself a woman of power and glamour. Ella’s past with Lonnie is a source of bitterness for her. “Lonnie? I just let you have him because I seen you was in need. I can git any man I want.”

Other folks in the camp include -

The men:
Stew Beef, Sop-The-Bottom, Few Clothes, Nunkie, Do-Dirty and Box-Car

The women:
Bunch, Laura B. and the young Maudella.

Glossary

Barlow knife: A brand of pocketknives. Bartow: City in Florida, founded in 1851, approximately 50 miles southwest of Orlando, site of the Polk County Courthouse. Buddy Bolden: (b. 1877, d. 1931) American trumpet player. He worked as a barber by day, and then he played the Louisiana clubs at night. First to bring together many elements of the New Orleans jazz style. He also went by King Bolden. “Do it up brown”: To do thoroughly, excellently or perfectly. Ethel Waters: (b. 1896, d. 1977) African-American blues singer. She made her recording debut in 1921 with “The New York Glide.” Well-known songs include “Down Home Blues” and “Oh, Daddy.” She began acting on Broadway and in film during the 1930s. In 1957 she found religion and toured with Billy Graham until her death. Fan-foot: A species of lizard, supposed to have venomous toes. A slang term for a promiscuous woman. Fats Waller: (b. 1904, d. 1943) American pianist, singer, and composer. His most famous song is “Ain’t Misbehavin’.” He died unexpectedly of pneumonia on a train near Kansas City, Missouri. Haints: Southern U.S. term for ghosts or spirits, derived from “haunts.” High John de Conquer: Symbol of the triumphant spirit of black America. A folk hero that came with the winds from Africa. The laughing trickster. Jarhead: A black male. Jesse James: (b. 1847, d. 1882) American outlaw. He is known for many bank and train robberies that his gang perpetrated. Killed for the reward offered by the governor of Missouri. John Henry: Legendary steel-drivin’ man. A hero of folklore, he challenged the steam drill to a contest, which he won. He died at the end as a result of exhaustion. John the Baptist: Also known as John the Forerunner. The cousin of Jesus Christ. He prepared the way for the coming of Jesus Christ, converting many to follow Christ. Baptized Jesus.

Jook: Definition from Hurston’s Characteristics of Negro Expression: “Jook is a word for a Negro pleasure house. It may mean a bawdy house. It may mean the house set apart on public works where the men and women dance, drink and gamble. Often, it is a combination of all these.” It is associated with the work camp culture in the Southern states. Kissing cousin: A relative familiar enough to be greeted with a kiss. Lofton: A small town in northern Florida (Nassau County), near the Georgia border. Approximately 20 miles north of Jacksonville. Mink: One who has little money. Mojo: A magic power or magic spell. Mulberry: Small Florida town (~ 3 square miles), located 10 miles west of Bartow. It was known as a center for gamblers and outlaws. Mule-skinners: Workers that drive mules. Pikers: People that bet or gamble with small amounts of money. Pole cat: Originally a poultry cat, because it feeds on poultry. An American mammal that ejects an unpleasant odor when startled, a relative of the skunk. Quarters Boss: A man whose job it is to keep order in the work camp quarters. Savannah: City in Georgia. Located near the border with South Carolina and the Atlantic Ocean. Skitter man: A heavy, four-wheel tractor used to haul logs, especially over rugged terrain. A worker who uses a skid to haul logs. Skin game: A poker-like game played with two dealers. Involves betting on cards. Voodoo: A religious practice involving witchcraft and animal deities. It uses spells and conjuring for personal gain or to cause harm to others.

Anthropologist, novelist, folklorist, and playwright Zora Neale Hurston was born in Notasulga, Macon County, Alabama in 1891, the fifth child of Lucy Ann Potts and John Hurston, a Baptist preacher, farmer, and carpenter. She spent most of her childhood in Eatonville, Florida, America’s first black incorporated town, which she immortalizes in much of her work, and where her father became mayor for three terms. Hurston loved Eatonville so much she claimed the town as her birthplace. She had seven siblings and was close to her mother, who died when Hurston was 13. She attended Howard University but later won a scholarship to Barnard College where she studied anthropology under Franz Boas, earning her A.B. degree in 1928. She conducted folklore studies in the South and made folk-recordings there with musicologist Alan Lomax between 1935 and 1939.

Her writings focus primarily on the rural black folk who represent the culture in which she grew up. Some of her best known works include Jonah’s Gourd Vine (1934), the story of a black preacher and his ill-treated wife; Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937), regarded as an American classic for its portrayal of a woman achieving sexual and social liberation; Tell My Horse (1938), a blend of travel writing and anthropology based on her investigations of voodoo in Haiti; and Dust Tracks on a Road (1942), an award-winning autobiography which includes a recounting of her experience while conducting field studies in Polk County, Florida. She was a leading figure of the Harlem Renaissance, collaborating with other luminaries of the period such as Langston Hughes, Wallace Thurman, and Richard Bruce Nugent.

Hurston is lesser known for her dramatic works, although she wrote over 10 one-act and full-length play scripts. As with Polk County, the dramatic medium allowed her to showcase the African-American songs, dances and folklore she had gathered in her anthropological fieldwork. Hurston caught the theater bug as early as 1915 when she worked as a maid for a Gilbert and Sullivan traveling troupe. She was a drama student at Howard and in 1925 won prestigious writing awards for her first short plays Spears, and Color Struck. She met with very brief Broadway success with her play The Great Day, which was also performed at The New School in New York. In 1997 the Library of Congress discovered that her last solely authored play, Spunk (1935) was an unknown original script, not the same play that George C. Wolfe adapted from a collection of Hurston short stories and successfully produced on Broadway in 1992.

In her later years, Hurston worked as a maid. She died in abject poverty in 1960 and was buried in an unmarked grave in Fort Pierce, Florida. Acclaimed novelist Alice Walker made a pilgrimage to Florida to locate and properly mark the burial site in 1973, helping to spark a resurged interest in Hurston’s vital contributions to American literature and anthropology. A Zora Neale Hurston Festival is held in her hometown of Eatonville, Florida each January. Late in 2001, HarperCollins, Ms. Hurston’s long-time publisher, released a book of new Hurston writings. This newly discovered manuscript entitled, Every Tongue Got to Confess: Negro Folktales from the Gulf States, is the first new Hurston publication in over 50 years.

	“Anyway, the force from somewhere in Space which commands you to write in the first place, gives you no choice. You take up the pen when you are told, and write what is commanded. There is no agony like bearing an untold story inside you.” - Zora Neale Hurston

A Selected List of Published Works by Zora Neale Hurston

Jonah's Gourd Vine (1934)- The story of a black preacher and his ill-treated wife. Mules and Men (1935)— A collection of African-American folklore, much of it collected from Polk County, Florida, including songs and sermons, sayings and tall tales. Several characters from Polk County appear in this book. Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937)– A poetic love story portrays a woman achieving sexual and social liberation. Their Eyes Were Watching God is considered a seminal novel of American fiction. Tell My Horse (1938)– A blend of travel writing and anthropology based on Hurston's visits to Haiti and Jamaica in the 1930s. Moses, Man of the Mountain (1939)— A novel blending the Moses of the Old Testament with the Moses of African- American folklore to create a powerful story of the persecution of slavery, the dream of freedom, and the redemption of the faithful. Dust Tracks on a Road (1942)- Hurston's award-winning autobiographical account of her rise from childhood poverty in the rural South to prominence among the leading artists and intellectuals of the Harlem Renaissance. Seraph on the Suwanee (1948) – An exploration of a marriage full of love but very little communication and the desires of a young white woman in search of herself and her place in the world. Sanctified Church (1981) – A collection of essays on African-American folklore and the unique spiritual character of the Southern Christian Church. Mule Bone (1930)– The only collaboration between Zora Neale Hurston and Langston Hughes. Set in Eatonville, Florida this energetic play centers on a two-man song-and-dance team and the woman who comes between them. Spunk (1925) – A short story of a confident man who steals a weaker man’s wife, and how the husband gets his revenge after death. George C. Wolfe adapted it for the stage in the early 1990s. The Complete Stories (1921-1955) – A collection of Hurston's short fiction, most of which appeared only in literary magazines during her lifetime, and some of which has never been published before.

Migratory Laborers playing checkers in front of jook joint during slack season for vegetable pickers, Florida. Courtesy- Library of Congress.

The Lofton Lumber Company has its big mill and quarters deep in the primeval woods of South Central Florida. Huge live oaks, pines, magnolia cypresses, “sweet gum” (maples) and the like grow lush. Spanish moss drapes the trees. Tall cabbage palms tilt their crowns in clusters above the surrounding trees. Scrubby palmettos make a dense undergrowth.

The events in the lumber camps are ephemeral in every way. The murderous fight of today is forgotten tomorrow and the opponents work together in utmost friendship inside of twenty-four hours. The women of today may be forgotten tomorrow. Certainly it is remarkable for a love affair to survive a change of scene. There will be more women where they are going, and they say, “Let every town furnish its own. It’s a damn poor town that can’t furnish its own. Take no woman anywhere.” Here and there an attachment becomes permanent, and they settle down together, or travel together from camp to camp.

The women are misfits from the outside. Seldom good-looking, intelligent, or adjustable, they have drifted down to their level, unable to meet the competition outside. Many have made time in prisons also, usually for fighting over men. They too pack knives. No stigma attaches to them for prison terms. In fact, their prestige is increased if they have made time for a serious cutting. It passes for bravery – something to give themselves a rating in their small world, where no intellectual activities exist. Hence the boastful song: “I’m going to make me a graveyard of my own, etc.”

Rough fighting, drinking, loving, reckless, but at times a flash of religion comes to the top when they are very troubled or scared. Then for a short while, a Spiritual will well up out of them and be much-felt for the moment. Small number of churches have a hit-and-miss existence on the camps. They feel the need of a preacher for funerals. He is more often a man of the same stripe who reformed.

But these people have given the world the Blues, Work Songs, guitar picking in the Negro manner, and the type of piano playing which made Fats Waller famous, and is now being taken up by the world. Because it is typical, they call that type of piano playing “jooking”.

Life on a Sawmill. Courtesy- The Library of Congress.

“Cut Out and Get Out”

Florida experienced its lumber boom between 1880 and 1930. Thousands of loggers toiled in the piney woods and cypress swamps of the state on any given day to supply the hundreds of mills with raw logs for finished lumber. By 1930, lumbermen had razed the virgin forest of Florida---27 million acres in all. Under a ruthless “cut and get out” system, once the valuable timber had been stripped, the once-dense forest was abandoned by the mill company and the land was sold for as little as one dollar per acre, since the next crop of merchantable timber was at least 25 years away.

The life span of the average mill town was 25 years, though some operations closed after a major fire when the company decided that the remaining timber did not justify rebuilding the mill and town. At the end of the last day of operations, workers let the fires go out under the boilers, and let the mill whistle sound a dying work call until the steam supply was exhausted. The entire town was left to rot in the woods or to be inhabited by vagabonds. By the 1930s these “ghost towns” were scattered across the southeastern United States.


Housing

I have worked in the woods ten year or more, and slept on a bunk or flat on the floor— from “I Have Worked in the Woods,” Lore of the Lumber Camps by Earl Clifton Beck

Company managers often owned homes of various architectural styles and sizes with water toilets and individual cess pools. However, home ownership was extremely rare in company towns and most laborers lived in three room “shotgun” style structures. Many workers lived in timber camps, more remote areas closer to the logging fronts.

Sawmill workers' homes, Florida. Courtesy- The Library of Congress.

“The Quarters”

Company towns were deeply segregated in all of their social functions and this could be seen most readily in the housing. Black workers had to share water pumps for three or four houses. Almost no black homes had electricity. There was usually a church and a school in the quarter but again, they were not properly maintained by the company. Companies also had separate boarding houses for unmarried black men. Most companies hired “quarters bosses” to keep “law and order” inside the quarters.

The Jook

[Juke joints are] as southern as jazz, fried chicken, corn bread, channel cats, chewing tobacco, and lynching---from Palmetto Country by Stetson Kennedy

For most mill towns, the premiere spot for illicit social activity was the jook or “juke,” usually located on the “black side” of town. From Friday through Saturday nights, the “joint was jumpin'.” Here, drinking, gambling, brawling, bad women---and sometimes even murder---were the norm. Favorite gambling games included dice and card games such as poker, blackjack, and skins. On payday, after rounds of drinks, fights were common. Quarters bosses often served as overseers of the jooks, controlling the moonshine and gambling and generally keeping a watchful eye on the proceedings. In one Florida mill town which had no jail, the sheriff handcuffed rabble-rousers to a porch rail until the next morning when they went before a justice of the peace.


The Company Store

A commissary keeper was having his clerk stock some shelves. The clerk noticed that the invoice cost was $1 per unit and he was asked to put a $4 sale price on each item. “Boss,” he said, “Isn’t that taking too much of a mark up?” “What’s wrong with three percent” fired back the boss.”—from Old Trees - By Pete Gerrel

The company or commissary store was another major center of (more legitimate) social activity. There workers could socialize and purchase all of their goods without ever having to cross the town limits. Commissioners stocked everything from shoes, groceries, hardware and fresh meat to leather goods and toiletries. Some larger company stores housed the company doctor’s office, a barbershop and a drug store.


The Merchandise Check

Cardboard merchandise checks were the most common form of currency. Often they were color-coded for the denominations from five cents to five dollars. Color-coded checks were a reliable currency because a large population of workers were both illiterate and could not calculate. Other companies issued punch-out cards, coupon books or merchandise books.


All of the information in this article is derived from the following two sources:

• Lumbermen and Log Sawyers:
  Life, Labor, and Culture in the North Florida Timber Industry, 1830-1930, by Jeffrey A. Drobney, Mercer University Press, Macon, Georgia.
  
• Old Trees:
  The Illustrated History of Logging the Virgin Timber in the Southeastern United States,
  by Pete Gerrel, SYP (Southern Yellow Pine) Publishing, Crawfordsville, FL.

The Harlem Renaissance was a period of cultural explosion in the African-American community which had its origins just prior to 1910 when many middle-class African-Americans in New York City moved from midtown to the newly-built suburb of Harlem. At this time a large block along 135th and Fifth Ave was bought up by various African-American realtors and a church group. This encouraged a "white flight" which lowered real estate prices. African-Americans from the southern states quickly joined this new community in an effort to escape the poverty and inequities of their difficult lives in the South. A new society quickly emerged hosting prominent artists and important political voices such as James Weldon Johnson, Black Nationalist Marcus Garvey, and W.E.B. Dubois, the influential editor of The Crisis from 1910 to 1934. What began as a series of literary discussions and political debates eventually flowered into a hotbed of artistic expression giving us some of the most influential writers, poets, musicians and visual artists of the 20th century. This community, first known as “The New Negro Movement” and later as the Harlem Renaissance, recognized and honored the unique culture of African-Americans and encouraged African-Americans to celebrate their heritage and find new and vital forms of self-expression.

While Harlem Renaissance artists were not a part of a single school of thought or aesthetic, they nonetheless shared a common perspective: they recorded Black life from within the Black community. Among the major writers who are usually viewed as part of the Harlem Renaissance are Claude McKay, Countee Cullen, Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Rudolph Fisher, James Weldon Johnson, and Jean Toomer.

The following timeline offers some information about world events that had an impact on the development of the Harlem Renaissance.

1919	- 369th Regiment, an African-American unit forced to fight under the French army in World War I because the US did not want African-American soldiers in combat, marched up Fifth Avenue to Harlem, February 17. - Benjamin Brawley published The Negro in Literature and Art in the United States.
1920	- Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) Convention held at Madison Square Garden, August. - Charles Gilpin starred in Eugene O'Neill’s The Emperor Jones, November. - James Weldon Johnson appointed first black officer (secretary) of NAACP. - Claude McKay published Spring in New Hampshire. - Du Bois's Darkwater is published.
1921	- Shuffle Along by Noble Sissle and Eubie Blake, the first musical revue written and performed by African Americans (cast members include Josephine Baker and Florence Mills), opened May 22, at Broadway's David Belasco Theater. - Colored Players Guild of New York founded.
1922	- First anti-lynching legislation approved by House of Representatives. - The Book of American Negro Poetry edited by James Weldon Johnson published.
1923	-National Ethiopian Art Players staged The Chip Woman's Fortune by Willis Richardson, first serious play by a black writer on Broadway. - The Cotton Club opened.
1924	- Civic Club Dinner, sponsored by Opportunity, bringing black writers and white publishers together. This event is considered the formal launching of the New Negro movement. - Paul Robeson starred in O'Neill's All God's Chillun Got Wings.
1925	- Survey Graphic issue, "Harlem: Mecca of the New Negro," edited by Alain Locke and Charles Johnson, devoted entirely to black arts and letters. - American Negro Labor Congress held in Chicago. - Opportunity holds its first literary awards dinner; winners include Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen, and Zora Neale Hurston.
1927	- In Abraham's Bosom by Paul Green, with an all-black cast, won the Pulitzer Prize. - Louis Armstrong in Chicago and Duke Ellington in New York began their careers. - Harlem Globetrotters established.
1929	- Negro Experimental Theatre founded; Negro Art Theatre founded, June; National Colored Players founded. - Wallace Thurman's play Harlem, written with William Jourdan Rapp, opened at the Apollo Theater on Broadway and became hugely successful. - Black Thursday, October 29, Stock Exchange crash.
1930	- Universal Holy Temple of Tranquility founded; Black Muslims opened Islam Temple in Detroit.
1932	- Mass defection of blacks from the Republican party began.
1933	- National Negro Business League ceased operations after 33 years.
1934	-W.E.B. Du Bois resigned from The Crisis and NAACP. - Apollo Theatre opened. - Zora Neale Hurston’s Jonah's Gourd Vine published.
1935	- Porgy and Bess, with an all-black cast, opened on Broadway, October 10. - Mulatto by Langston Hughes, first full-length play by a black writer, opened on Broadway, October 25. - 50 percent of Harlem's families unemployed. - Zora Neale Hurston’s Mules and Men published.
1937	- Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God published.
1939	- Zora Neale Hurston’s Moses: Man of the Mountain published.

1. Brainstorm a list of ideas and emotions that are associated with the word ‘community’. How is a community defined and what are the obstacles that might hinder or destroy a community? Choose one idea or emotion from the list created and write a short passage inspired by that thought. In reading the passages aloud look for patterns or trends in imagery and theme. What are certain traits that make up your community? How many different ways can you define community?

2. In Polk County, music plays a significant part in the lives of the characters and the telling of the story. The characters use music to express their frustrations, sorrows and joys. Many of these songs are traditional blues songs. Choose a song from today’s culture that would describe “your blues.” Write down the lyrics and be prepared to justify how these are applicable to your life.

3. Research folklore from another culture. Compare the characters and the situations from those stories with those Hurston collected. What themes seem universal? Which are specific to African-Americans in Florida?

4. Research some of Zora Neale Hurston’s other works. What themes are prevalent throughout her writing? What do you think the themes of Polk County will be?

5. Imagine that you are designing a set for a full production of this play. What would be your design concept, the visual idea that ties the production together? Is there a feeling or emotion that you would want to express through your design of this production?

Co-Adapters Kyle Donnelly and Cathy Madison

KYLE DONNELLY (Director/Adapter) most recently directed the world premiere of Shakespeare in Hollywood at Arena Stage where she also originally directed the world premiere of Polk County, which won the Helen Hayes Award for Best New Musical. She has also worked recently at American Conservatory Theatre with The Constant Wife and at the Old Globe Theatre with A Midsummer Nights Dream and with Philadelphia Here I Come! at the Williamstown Theatre Festival. She has had a long association with Arena Stage, having been Associate Artistic Director from 1992 to 1998 and directed such productions as Tom Walker, The Women, Lovers and Executioners, The Miser, Molly Sweeney, A Small World, Dancing at Lughnasa (winner of Helen Hayes Award for Best Production), Summer and Smoke, A Month in the Country, The School for Wives, Misalliance and others. She directed the American premiere of Brian Friel’s Give Me Your Answer, Do! for Roundabout Theatre and worked at the Goodman Theatre (The Rover, Dancing at Lughnasa), Steppenwolf Theatre (Molly Sweeney), Old Globe (Orson’s Shadow), Huntington Theatre (Hyde Park, Aristocrats, Little Foxes) as well as Actor’s Theatre of Louisville, A Contemporary Theatre and other regional theatres. She is the Head of the Professional Actor Training program at UCSD in San Diego. This one is for Ella.

Co-Adapters Kyle Donnelly and Cathy Madison

CATHY MADISON (Co-Adapter) served as literary manager of Arena Stage for seven seasons. Some of her favorite assignments included Keith Glover’s Coming of the Hurricane, Strindberg’s Dance of Death, and Clare Boothe Luce’s The Women, directed by Kyle Donnelly. She has served as a regular panelist for the D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities and teaches at School Without Walls High School for Young Playwrights Theater. Ms. Madison received her MFA in dramaturgy and dramatic criticism from Columbia University. Last year she assisted the director of the Smithsonian Folklife Festival (Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage). Ms. Madison recently decided on a career change and is now a fundraiser for the Smithsonian American Art Museum. Ms. Madison proudly hails from the South Bronx, New York City. She offers all honors and praise to Zora Neale Hurston for giving the world this wonderful play.

Chic Street Man – Music Director and Composer

Chic Street Man is a composer, performer and educator. He recorded his first album, “Growing Up,” in Paris, France in 1975. After touring through France he returned to Santa Barbara, CA, where he founded Chic Street Man’s School of Performing Arts. In 1987, he released his second album “Make It Thru the Night.” Also in 1987 he toured Russia and Poland as Artistic Director of the Boston production of the international play, Peace Child. In 1990 Chic composed the music and starred in the Off-Broadway show Spunk adapted by George C. Wolfe from three short stories by Zora Neale Hurston. Spunk was performed at the New York Shakespeare Festival, the Crossroads Theater, the Royal Court, and the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, and Chic received a 1990 Audelco Award and 1992 NAACP Theater Arts Award for his work on the production.

Since then Chic has continued to work widely in theater as a composer, arranger, and performer. In 1994 he composed the score and starred in the Berkeley Repertory Theater's production of The Caucasian Chalk Circle. He was a contributing author, performer and musical arranger for the Denver Center Theater Company's It Ain't Nothin' But The Blues in 1995, and starred in the Mark Taper Forum production of Lost Highway: The Story of Hank Williams in 1998. In 2000 Chic composed the score for the Alabama Shakespeare Festival's world premiere of A Lesson Before Dying and composed the score and was the featured performer in the Cleveland Playhouse's world premiere of Touch The Names--Letters to The Vietnam Veteran's Memorial.

In 1997 a cache of unpublished Hurston works was discovered at the Library of Congress. Among those works was Polk County, which had been deposited for copyright in 1944, but never produced. The manuscript came to the attention of Arena Stage dramaturg Cathy Madison and director Kyle Donnelly, and in the winter of 2001 Arena Stage and the Library of Congress co-produced a concert reading of the play. The vibrant language and engaging characters leapt off the page. Madison and Donnelly were inspired, and two years later their adaptation was produced at Arena Stage, where it won 5 Helen Hayes awards (DC’s Tonys), including Outstanding New Musical. Before the first rehersal for its McCarter run, the Education Staff sat down with Cathy and Kyle to discuss their approach for this production.

Education Department: Congratulations on your work with Polk County thus far. How has the Arena Stage production prepared you for your run at McCarter Theatre? What have you learned?

Kyle Donnelly: We learned what worked and what didn’t work. There are sections that never quite worked the way we wanted them to and so we are finding ways to adjust. You learn a lot from your audience and we have learned that an audience really responds to this piece in a positive way. Audiences love the language. The language is rich, the music is accessible and fun, and the characters just jump off the page and onto the stage. So there’s a very positive, fun connection to the audience. The script has tightened up, the music has different arrangements, and many of the song choices have changed. Another big difference is that we are doing this production in the proscenium instead of doing it in the round. As a director, I’m going into this as if it’s a further development of this particular piece. I know the play really well, but it’s not a repeat. Cathy Madison: We learned a lot. I personally read every single review that came out and I spoke to a lot of people that I trusted in the field. We’ve really made some changes to strengthen the storyline and character development just to try to make it as strong of a play as it can possibly be.

Education Department: How do you adapt this play and make sure that you are staying true to Zora Neale Hurston’s voice?

Cathy Madison: You have to get to know Zora. Get to know her work, not just Polk County, but her total body of work and her life. I was a big fan of Zora Neale Hurston way before I read Polk County at the Library of Congress. I had some background and having that knowledge certainly helped. Every time I did a rewrite on the script or added a tiny scene or whatever, it was really painstaking for me. It takes me a couple of hours just to write a few lines because I am trying to stay so true to her life and her world. She is from the late 1920’s north central Florida at a saw mill labor camp, and I’m from the South Bronx. So it was really putting myself in a whole other frame of mind.

Education Department: Is it hard to write in the vernacular that she has helped to establish?

Cathy Madison: It definitely is and that’s why it would take me forever to write one line. Sometimes Kyle would write one line, or she would have an idea and write something down and say, “Ok Cathy, put this in Zora’s language.” It’s also important to remember that these are real people. Zora was a cultural anthropologist as well as a folk lore-ist, and Polk County is based on real events that she experienced when she was doing cultural research actually in Polk County. The play may in fact be very autobiographical although we don’t dwell on that because we really want to focus on the art. But her personal memoirs are very true to this whole story line.

Education Department: Polk County is described as a play with music and music is an essential part of the story. How does the music help shape the show?

Cathy Madison: It was funny when we won best new musical, because we always say it’s a play with music, but of course, when we got best new musical, we didn’t fight it. These songs, most of them, are pre-existing early blues songs, except for some songs that Chic has created specifically for this production. They are not songs that were written for the play specifically, they were classic early blues and folk songs. But the music is just as important as the story. It tells us who these people are, what they are about.

Education Department: What do you want the audience to take away from this play?

Cathy Madison: A real respect and appreciation for these characters. I don’t want people to see them just as folksy, colorful, poor black people who are just singing and dancing. They are real people, with real lives and they went through a lot of struggles. Their lives were hard, but they still found joy in their lives and blues came out of that. The whole blues culture, blues music, came out of that. I would even say that hip hop evolved out of that. These are brilliant people in their own way, they gave a gift to American culture. Kyle Donnelly: Also the sense of community is very important. Zora created such wonderful characters and they belong together, to this community. It’s also a love story and not just between the men and the women but also caring between the men. There is also a strong sense of moral issues, and story telling.

If you had visited Harlem in the days of the Harlem Renaissance, you might have heard bandleader Duke Ellington playing "Take the A Train" (the subway to Harlem) at the Cotton Club or Louis "Satchmo" Armstrong shaking up the jazz
world with his trumpet playing at Connie's Inn. Louis Armstrong’s recordings and show tours marked jazz music's shift from a regionally-rooted art form to a national production. Fats Waller’s“Ain’t Misbehavin” could be heard at the Lincoln Theater in Harlem. The joints were jumping for this cultural explosion of jazz and the blues.

Chic Street Man, Composer and Musical Director for Polk County, talks with McCarter’s Education department about this music phenomenon, its impact on Polk County and his process.

Education Department: Who do you attribute your musical zeal to?

Chic Street Man: My mother. There was always music in our house. I was raised in Roxbury, which was the black ghetto part of Boston, and there wasn’t a lot of money around. There were four of us kids and when we would get something it would belong to all four of us. We’d get a bicycle and it belonged to all four of us. Well, when I was 7 years old I got a guitar and for some reason it was my guitar. It was in my room and it would just sit in the corner. I was never interested in playing it. It would just sit there, but it was mine. One day somebody broke into our house and they smashed everything and they smashed the guitar, and I jokingly say, from that moment on I knew I was going to be a guitar player. I didn’t get another guitar until I was sixteen. And that’s when I really started getting into music. My mother was always singing. My older brother sang. When I got my new guitar he would show me a couple of chords. But the physical part of playing came pretty natural to me. But my mother was my very first influence. And then I was influenced by people like Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee, Lightnin' Hopkins, B.B. King.

Education Department: What is your process in creating music for an already existing play, with a very specific vocabulary?

Chic Street Man: This process, which is still going on, was kind of easy because Zora Neale Hurston had already proposed music for this particular play. We have music suggested by her as well as actually sung by her, so we were at a great beginning point. But in conjunction with this pre-existing music, the director wanted to have new music. So what I did was listen to a lot of the music that she had already proposed and really tried to focus in on and find the sensibility that Zora was looking for in terms of character and then I would try to stay as close to that wonderfully created world. The vocabulary is in a vernacular that I am familiar with. The music that I ascribe to comes from that whole era. That 20s, 30s, 40s, country, blues, gospel regime. My folks are from Georgia so I was really heavily influenced by a lot of what my mother sang. As a matter of fact, I lean on her a little bit for some of the influence I wanted to have with Polk County. For example in some of the jook joint scenes I would ask her, “does this feel like something that you would have danced to when you were 12 or 13 years old down there?” And she said, “That’s right on the money.” It helped that I had prior experience and was familiar with Zora’s work. I had composed music for another one of her pieces which was produced by George C. Wolfe at the Public Theatre called Spunk. Her writing is so colorful, and so powerful because she has really captivated a culture and a climate and an environment. It's much different than composing music that is not part of a larger production. In this case, you’ve got something here that already gives you a direction and a focus for the music. A lot of times people ask me, when I write my own stuff, “where do you get your ideas from”? Or they ask about my process. For me, it’s a joint process; I get a feeling, maybe on the guitar, and I say, “That’s cool…I should put some lyrics to that.” With Polk County, the music and the lyrics work together hand in hand. Sometimes I get an idea if there’s something going on out there in the world, and I’ll say, “Oh that needs to be a song.” But in this case, the direction was already there for you, you get a story line and it’s there. You’ve got this character who’s telling this other character something, and so the story tells you where the words should go and then you can to figure out where the music wants to go.

Education Department: Is it difficult to incorporate your own influence while staying true to Zora’s vision?

Chic Street Man: That’s an excellent question. And the answer is collaboration. Collaboration between me, Zora and the director. Last week Kyle mentioned a particular spot in the script for a character to have a song. She wanted a song for a very particular moment. So I started writing. Then we found something that was already written by Zora from a different source that could be used in that moment. So then what I will do is take some of what I wrote and see if I can combine it with some of what Zora wrote. Luckily this world is very clearly defined. I just take what I know about these characters and give them an elevated and heightened life. I’m hoping that the music will be an extension of the character. This extension will allow the audience to go deeper into the experience of the moments that have music. Hopefully the music won't take the moment somewhere else, that’s the challenge.

1. What surprised you the most in your viewing of Polk County? How did this production compare to your expectations?

2. Review the character descriptions in this guide and consider each of the main characters. What are their specific wants at the beginning of the play? Do they achieve these desires by the end of the play? What choices do they make, and what tactics do they use to obtain these wants?

3. Are there places in the play where you saw the characters make important choices? In what moments did you feel that the lives of these characters had been altered forever? Examine alternative choices that the characters might have made in those moments. How would these choices have altered the relationships in the play?

4. Consider the role of My Honey. What choice is he forced to make? Does his decision surprise you? How would you have reacted in his place? What would you say to his character at the beginning of the play? At the end of the play?

5. At the end of the play Big Sweet, Lonnie, My Honey, and Leafy Lee head north. Write a story describing their adventures in New York. How do the differences between New York City and Polk County affect them? Who are some of the famous people they might meet?

6. Explore the Harlem Renaissance. Read poems by Langston Hughes, who was one of the foremost and versatile writers of this group and a friend and collaborator of Hurston’s. How does his poems reflect the themes present in Polk County? What can be said about this style of writing? Can you see how it influenced the hip-hip culture of today’s world? Try to write a poem in the style of Hughes that reflects on one of the themes seen in Polk County.

The following exercises will allow students to participate in the process of drama. This process can be fleshed out and adapted into a 'theater' product. Again, please feel free to adapt these activities to accommodate your own teaching strategies and curricular needs.

1. Text to Text: Compare the ideas explored in Polk County to another play or novel that you have read. Are there themes or thoughts that resonate in Polk County that are present in other texts? Discuss how the same themes or ideas are explored in different texts. Examine how fictional tales of communities compare to non-fiction accounts of life. Why do you think writers use real life events and experiences to create fictional works?

2. Your Story: Choose a game, song, saying or story that has been passed down through the generations in your family. Research where this tradition originated. See how far back you can go and try to uncover the reason behind its creation. Teach this tradition to your class and be sure to keep it alive.

3. After Polk County: Choose one of the characters from Polk County. How do you think this character is changed by the events of the play? What do you think happens immediately after the final scene of the play? Write a monologue from this character’s point of view explaining his/her perspective on what happened over the course of those few days in Polk County. Compare the monologues with each other and discuss you perceptions.

4. Tableaux - Participants create a frozen picture which serves to crystallize an idea or to communicate a concrete image. These images may be brought to life or 'thought-tracked' by having individuals speak their inner thoughts. Have several students create a family portrait tableau. In what way can the students portray these characters' thoughts and emotions through only this frozen picture? Keep the frozen portrait. Have each student talk in role as their character about the other members of the community.

5. Hot-Seating - Choose one student to take on the role of Dicey. Have the other students question and interrogate this character on the actions and choices this character has made. Have the class come up with several statements that could be said about this character and the choices they made. Do you feel the actions that Dicey took were justified? Can you justify them from her point of view?

The following related readings provide additional information about Zora Neale Hurston’s life. Many of these resources were used in the preparation of this guide.

Bloom, Harold, ed. Zora Neale Hurston. Philadelphia: Chelsea House, 2003. Boyd, Valerie. Wrapped in Rainbows: The Life of Zora Neale Hurston. New York: Scribner, 2003. Campbell, Josie P. Student Companion to Zora Neale Hurston. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2001. Cronin, Gloria L., ed. Critical Essays on Zora Neale Hurston. New York: G. K. Hall; London: Prentice Hall International, 1998. Davis, Rose Parkman. Zora Neale Hurston: An Annotated Bibliography and Reference Guide. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1997. Gates, Henry Louis, Jr., and K.A. Appiah, eds. Zora Neale Hurston: Critical Perspectives Past and Present. New York: Amistad, 1993; distributed in the U.S. by Penguin USA. Hemenway, Robert E. Zora Neale Hurston: A Literary Biography. With a foreword by Alice Walker. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1977. Hill, Lynda Marion. Social Rituals and the Verbal Art of Zora Neale Hurston. Washington, D.C.: Howard University Press, 1996. Holloway, Karla F. C. The Character of the Word: The Texts of Zora Neale Hurston. New York: Greenwood Press, 1987. Karanja, Ayana I. Zora Neale Hurston: The Breath of Her Voice. New York: Peter Lang, 1999. Meisenhelder, Susan Edwards. Hitting a Straight Lick with a Crooked Stick: Race and Gender in the Work of Zora Neale Hurston. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1999. Miles, Diana. Women, Violence and Testimony in the Works of Zora Neale Hurston. New York: P. Lang, 2003. Peters, Pearlie Mae Fisher. The Assertive Woman in Zora Neale Hurston's Fiction, Folklore, and Drama. New York: Garland Pub., 1998.