(mis)Understanding Mammy: The Hattie McDaniel Story
(mis)Understanding Mammy: the Hattie McDaniel Story
by Joan Ross Sorkin
Starring Tina Fabrique
Directed by Seret Scott
(mis)UNDERSTANDING MAMMY, a one-woman play with music, is a story of race in America, examined through the lens of Hattie McDaniel’s remarkable life. Hattie achieved stardom by becoming the first African-American to win an Academy Award, but she paid a high price for fame. By playing a succession of maids and cooks, most notably Mammy in “Gone With The Wind,” she became the target of an unrelenting “campaign against Mammyism” led by Walter White of the NAACP who thought her roles were stereotypical and degrading to their race.
Set in 1952 at the Motion Picture Country Home and Hospital in Woodland Hills, California, the play begins as Hattie is dying of breast cancer. Hallucinating in her hospital room, Hattie believes Walter White has come to reconcile their differences, and in order to prove to him that she was indeed a credit to her race, she reminds him of the major events of her life and her many “firsts,” large and small. Throughout Hattie’s roller coaster ride, she sings and dances, cracks jokes, and recites the lines that made her famous, illuminating a life so often misunderstood.
Performances:
Friday, July 21 at 8pm
Saturday, July 22 at 3pm
Saturday, June 22 at 8pm
Sunday, July 23 at 3pm
Friday, July 21 at 8pm
Saturday, July 22 at 3pm
Saturday, July 22 at 8pm
Sunday, July 23 at 3pm
Event Location and Ticket Information
Date: Sunday, July 23, 2023 - Monday, July 24, 2023
Times: 8:00 pm - 9:30 pm
Ticket pricing:
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Presenter: The Schoolhouse Theater
Presenter Phone: 9144737111
Presenter Website: https://www.theschoolhousetheater.org