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Theatre department celebrates 50th anniversary with largest production ever
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he curtain rose on Jackson State University’s largest production in its history last fall when it staged the Broadway hit musical The Color Purple. The production featured a cast of nearly 50 performers that included JSU students, community members and members of Jackson’s world renowned Mississippi Mass Choir. “We had an outstanding cast. We tried to pull in the best of the best,” said Dr. Mark Henderson, theatre director of JSU’s Department of Speech Communications and Theatre. “We had auditions in the summer and started rehearsals right after Labor Day. It was quite an undertaking.” The production marked the theatre department’s 50th anniversary and topped off many events during JSU’s Domestic Abuse Awareness Month. The musical is based on Alice Walker’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel. Walker taught at Jackson State and was JSU’s writer in residence in 1968-1969. In 1985, the novel was made into an Academy-nominated movie starring Whoopi Goldberg and Mississippi native
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Oprah Winfrey. The musical version ran on Broadway from 2005 to 2008. The biggest challenge in staging such a large production was funding. But, Henderson said, “we found four major sponsors that really stepped up.” One of those sponsors was the Latasha Norman Center for Counseling and Psychological Services on the JSU campus. The center is named for a 20-year-old JSU student who was murdered in 2007 by an ex-boyfriend. The other major donors were the Chris Cook Foundation, the Jackson State University Division of Student Life and the Southern Institute for Mental Health Advocacy Research and Training. Jackson State alumna Deja Abdul-Haqq, an environmental and policy change program manager for the nonprofit health agency My Brother’s Keeper, was cast as Celie. Ashlei Murray, then a senior theatre major at JSU, played the role of club singer Shug Avery. Proceeds from the production went toward the establishment of an endowment fund to provide scholarships in the JSU theatre department.