Stageworks’ Civil Rights drama is back for an encore

It’s a flashpoint moment in American history. Young African Americans in 20 Southern States defied early 1960s segregation laws by staging non-violent “sit-in” protests at lunch counters, where Black patrons were not permitted.

It happened in Tampa, marking a sea-change in Civil Rights.

Playwright and author Mark E. Leib dramatized the Tampa Woolworth’s protests in his 2023 play When the Righteous Triumph. It focused on the struggles of 20-year-old organizer Clarence Fort and his friends, who’d had enough of segregation and discrimination. And worse.

Fort – who was a real person – was aided by actual people with actual clout, including NAACP leader Reverend A. Leon Lowry and Mayor Julian Lane.

Stageworks Theatre, which produced the original run of the play, is reviving it March 6-9, 15 and 16 at the Jaeb Theatre, in Tampa’s David A. Straz Center complex.

The revival was made possible through a community fundraising effort ($500,000 was raised) and with the support of local leaders including Arthenia Joyner, a sit-in participant and former Florida State Senator, former Tampa mayors Pam Iorio, Dick Greco, and Bob Martinez (himself an ex-governor, too) and others.

More than 1,500 Tampa Bay high school students will attend special morning and afternoon performances. 

“I grew up in Jim Crow Tampa, and it was not a pretty place, racially,” playwright Leib told the Catalyst in a 2023 interview. “So this is an attempt to stir the memory of people who were there, and to alert people who were not there that only 60 years ago, race relations in Tampa were terrible.

“And to remind them that where we are now, and how we should think about movements like Black Lives Matter; all those questions can be further illuminated by knowing what happened in this city on Franklin Street, and on Tampa Street and on Twiggs Boulevard.”

Nearly all of the 2023 cast has returned for this run of shows, as has director Chris Jackson.

Portraying Lowry, who among other accomplishments opened Tampa’s first Black-owned bank, is “incredibly special and surreal,” says actor Clay Christopher. “It’s the first time I’ve played anyone of an historic nature, so there’s a lot of weight to it.”

Christopher has appeared in numerous recent productions on both sides of the bay – he was in the cast of Stageworks’ The Color Purple, and played Dr. Frank N. Furter in The Rocky Horror Show, the best-selling show in Jobsite Theatre history.

There was weight to the Lowry role, he adds, “when I played it two years ago, and there’s certainly the same now. I just have two more years of personal experience and more knowledge … it’s special, it’s daunting at times, but the feeling is gratitude.”

Mark Wildman, who plays Clarence Fort, is new to the cast. “There are a couple of instances in the play where the character believes he has something to prove to Rev. Lowry,” Wildman believes.

Clarence was smart, and brave, and had the courage of his convictions. “Whenever he visits the diner and sits down at the counter with Roberta, all eyes immediately go to them,” Wildman explains. “And it has, in my opinion, the potential to be a very overwhelming feeling.”

Wildman, who was in that same Jobsite production of Rocky Horror (he played Rocky), admits it took him a little while to get a fix on the enormity of the historic events portrayed in When the Righteous Triumph.

“Although I did not face those same challenges, or to the degree that Clarence faced, going through these motions I’ve been able to find some clarity on the events as a whole,” he explains. “As well as how he may have perceived going through those experiences.”

For the performance schedule, additional information and tickets, visit the Straz Center website.