Strom Thurmond is Not a Racist & Cleansed

Additional performance added: Saturday, March 3rd at 2pm.

In a double-bill of playwright Thomas Bradshaw’s scathing and sardonic race companion pieces, The Immediate Theatre Company presents Strom Thurmond Is Not A Racist and Cleansed.

Inspired by a true story, Strom Thurmond Is Not A Racist is an absurdist look at the absurd life of Senator Strom Thurmond. After fathering a child with his black maid as a young man, the extremely white Strom Thurmond became one of the country’s greatest segregationists; all the while playing daddy to young Essie Mae Washington Williams. When’s a racist not a racist? How could someone live such a duplicitous life? It happens.

Cleansed is a deeply disturbing new play about a black doctor, his white wife and the challenges their mixed daughter faces growing up in a white-bread Indiana town. From being taunted by Skinheads to becoming a Skinhead, the play explores the underbelly of racial identification and the difficulties faced by children of mixed parents. Sometimes the hate you have for yourself overwhelms anything anybody else could ever have for you.