This year’s event will feature the stories of slave ship Clotilda and Africatown being brought to life in a short stage highlight titled “An Ocean in My Bones,” developed by playwright and award-winning director Terrence Spivey. The roughly 45-minute one-act highlight is a precursor to the full-length stage play that will world premiere in Mobile, February 2024.
The festival will take place at historic Mobile County Training School(800 Whitley Street) in Africatown. The school was founded by descendants of Clotilda in 1880.The Cleveland Ohio based Spivey, a graduate of Prairie View A & M University with a B.A. Degree in Theatre Arts and is also Artistic Associate of Mobile’s IMANI Community Theater. He is the Artistic Director for Powerful Long Ladder in Cleveland where he once served in the same position for the oldest black theatre in the country, Karamu House, programming over 70 plays for 12 years.“Bringing such a powerful story to life is an honor and a privilege like none other,” said Spivey.
During the festival, we will only have 10 to 15actors, but the larger stage production will have up to 50. The Clotilda and Africatown ancestors deserve to have their voices heard after so many generations of being ignored and marginalized. It’s time to let them bear witness to the struggles, hardships, and pain, but also the resilience, fortitude, and togetherness that allowed them to make a way out of no way.”
COVER STORY
We Want to Live! STOP NOW! LIVE NOW!
As Faith in Action Alabama, Mobile Hub continues the movement toward dismantling
systemic racism to create pathways of opportunity for all Alabamians, and we continue
to focus on decreasing gun violence in the Port City.
This initiative evolved from our night walks that began about three years ago. The night
walks would occur one to two times per month in targeted neighborhoods. Our primary focus
was to let the community know that we stood with them in the fight against gun violence,
along with the notion that someone cared.
As we journeyed through 2021, gun violence seemed to escalate in the Port City daily.
It seemed to be the topic at the start of each newscast. Therefore, Faith in Action Alabama
Mobile Hub began to strategize how to combat this violence spreading throughout the city. It
was no longer an activity that occurred at night, but now the shootings took place
in broad daylight.
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