About This Show
Ford’s Theatre opens its 2006-2007 Reading Series with Palmer Park by Joanna McClelland Glass. The play is a provocative look at race relations in America and a community’s efforts to pursue harmony between blacks and whites. As she did last season with Trying and its portrayal of her relationship with the late Judge Francis Biddle, Glass bases her newest play on personal experiences. Chuck Smith, resident director of Chicago’s Goodman Theatre, directs.
Palmer Park explores the issues of “white flight” and integration in 1960s Detroit as Martin and Kate Townsend, a white couple, move to the area and join the Wayne State University faculty. They buy a home in Palmer Park, an integrated neighborhood determined to keep the racial makeup of blacks and whites at thirty-five percent to sixty-five percent, respectively. The neighborhood program prompts a poor Black community to sue and, in the process, raises questions such as “who should determine the racial makeup of a community?” and “can integration really work?”
Doors open at 6:30 PM.
