Trouble in Mind

It’s 1957, and Chaos in Belleville, an anti-lynching Broadway play, has started rehearsals. After years spent in parts beneath her intelligence and talent, Wiletta Mayer is finally playing the leading lady. As the company begins its work, Wiletta and the white director clash over her “take” on the role and whether the play has begun to say the things that can’t be said. Set along the fault lines of the early Civil Rights movement, Alice Childress’s Trouble in Mind offers a disturbing and disarmingly funny look at the half-truths we tell ourselves about race and progress in America.