30 Days of NYMF on BroadwayWorld Day 2: Soon Of a Mornin'

When I first met Andrea Frierson-Toney to discuss "Soon Of A Mornin'", the musical that she had written about Gee's Bend Farms, the Pettway slaves and the famous Gee's Bend Quilts. I wasn't immediately drawn to this historical portrait of the poorest depression era community in the United States. Although I was very familiar with the history of the Gee's Bend Farms, its success and its failures, my feeling at the time was that there were other far more interesting "New Deal" stories to tell, stories with broader appeal and marketability.

Eventually it was the beautiful and powerful score that drew me to the material and the poignant story that she had written about the Gee's Bend Community, a story of hope, survival, love, loss, learning, and forgiveness. Some of the most beautiful lyrics that I have ever heard, touching and heartfelt, are contained in her wonderfully moving score. Weaving her own material with traditional folk songs, she tells this community's story with such delicacy, that's its difficult not to relate to these individuals and the hardships they face.

At its core is the story of Sarah Mae Pettway and Annie Chambers, an account of two women and the community they serve. So completely different and yet so similar in so very many ways. In another time, another place, under different circumstances, they may have had a better understanding of each other, but in the depths of the depression when all very many had was each other, and the people the government sent to help were more intent on changing than learning and helping, it's easy to understand their conflict.

Both women want what is best for the Gee's Bend Community but each has a different a strategy, a method or way of achieving that goal. So completely different, yet so very much the same. Annie, an educated white idealist from the north, coming to the south to teach and cleanse this poor African-American community insists that her way is the only way, and Sarah Mae Pettway, a single mother with two children to raise and not very much to give them, believes and relies heavily on the past, the traditions that she has learned, a culture that that has survived generation after generation, from one family to the next.

Soon Of A Mornin' is a tale of understanding, compassion and forgiveness, a tale of a community wanting to adapt, a desire for a better life, to have more for themselves and their families. It's a story of learning and survival, and the two women trying their best to make it happen.

Robert Carreon, Producer

photo credit: Tom Caravaglia

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