Norfolk Play Revisits Life On Front 'Line' Of Civil Rights

The script, as it stood, "equally angered black audience and white audience members," he says. It particularly outraged viewers who had lived through Massive Resistance.

"It was so far from anything that even resembled what we went through," says Andrew Heidelberg, one of the members of the Norfolk 17 who attended the workshop. The author of the book "The Norfolk 17: A Personal Narrative on Desegregation in Norfolk, Virginia, in 1958-1962," Heidelberg thought that the play, at that point, perpetuated a facile myth: that the desegregation of the Norfolk schools, achieved through legal wrangling, without public physical violence, was a triumph. But for him, enrolling at a previously all-white high school meant bearing the brunt of hatred and slurs, not just briefly but for years.

"Inside those walls was hell," he says. "They called us those names -- listen to this now -- every day, at least a thousand times a day. And I'm being generous! For three years!" Five decades later, he confesses, he still tears up when he talks about the experience. "You can't forget that stuff," he says.

Mary Jane Birdsong -- one of the barred white students who became known as the Lost Class -- thought that the play failed to acknowledge her group's painful experience. Used as pawns by politicians, she says she and her classmates and teachers valued education and "wanted our schools to stay open regardless of who they taught." Nevertheless, in subsequent decades, whenever the alumni held a reunion, "some reporter would dig it up and would interview us and then would write us up -- and we were the bad guys!"

Heidelberg, Birdsong and other workshop attendees gave Hanna an earful. "I was shocked at how naive I'd been" in writing a simplistic "happy ending," Hanna admits. Returning to the drawing board, he solicited more oral histories and plunged into rewrites.

Douglas, whose credits include directing the world premiere of August Wilson's "Radio Golf" at Yale Repertory Theatre (and who staged Round House Theatre's 2007 "A Lesson Before Dying"), is generally hopeful that the play's latest incarnation "will inspire a progressive conversation" about racial relations:

"We have a lot of work to do with this conundrum of 'How do we become Americans together? How do we continue the discussion without descending into blame-blame? And that's becoming more interesting than actually finding ways to come together. It's such a challenge -- one worthy of continuing."

Clay, who joined "Line in the Sand" to work with Douglas, agrees that the play's themes will resonate broadly. "This is a peeling of an onion that I think is really going to make some eyes water beyond Virginia -- and I think that's a good thing," she says.

Birdsong thinks that, whether or not the revised play does justice to all aspects of the Massive Resistance story, it will at least underscore the significance of public education. "Without a good strong education, there's no hope for our economy. There's no hope for democracy," she says.

Birdsong and Heidelberg have seen the revised play. Birdsong says she is, for the most part, thrilled with the play's "responsible, sensible" and theatrically powerful treatment of historical facts.

For Heidelberg, the City of Norfolk's official commemoration has been cathartic. "This was the first time in 50 years that anybody had ever acknowledged the terrible and horrific things that we went through," he says. But after viewing the current "Line in the Sand" production (which runs through March 15), he says he thinks the play, while theatrically effective, still doesn't address the ordeal that the Norfolk 17 endured.

As for Hanna, he's been holding discussion after performances, and says that attendee interest and engagement has been "amazing."

He recalls that when he first conceived of the show, "I really had thought naively that, this is 50 years ago, what attachment could [audiences] hold to the story now? And no -- it's as immediate as yesterday."