Trouble in Mind by Alice Childress
Directed by Marti Gobel
Clarence Brown Theatre on the UT Campus
Previews: Wednesday and Thursday, February 8 and 9
Opens: Friday, February 10; Runs through February 26
Wednesdays – Saturdays** at 7:30 PM; Sunday matinee at 2:00 PM
**No performance on February 11; extra performance on Tuesday, February 21
Tickets and Information
In what has to be one of the great ironic twists of theatre, Alice Childress’ play Trouble in Mind opened on Broadway on November 18, 2021, produced by the Roundabout Theatre Company at the American Airlines Theatre. Sixty-four years earlier, the same play, first produced off-Broadway at Stella Holt’s Greenwich Mews Theatre, was destined for a Broadway run, but that production was canceled by its producers when Childress refused to re-write the play in order to dilute its message to appeal to a Broadway audience. The irony was that the plot of Trouble in Mind actually deals with much the same situation—a Black actress’ struggles with the choice between achieving success and maintaining one’s principles.
A production of Trouble in Mind is the next one for the Clarence Brown Theatre, a professional theatre in residence on the University of Tennessee campus. Preview performances take place on Wednesday and Thursday, February 8 and 9, with its opening night on Friday, February 10, at 7:30 PM.
The director of Trouble in Mind is Marti Gobel. In the leading role of veteran actress Wiletta Mayer is Shinnerrie Jackson. The cast also includes a number of familiar faces for Knoxville audiences: Tom Parkhill as Henry; Will Dorsey IV as John Nevins; Amberlin McCormick as Millie Davis; Rachel Darden as Judy Sears; Rico Bruce Wade as Sheldon Forrester; Joshua Peterson as Al Manners; Michael Najman as Eddie Fenton; and Terry Weber as Bill O’Wray.
Understudies include Tracey Copeland Halter (Wiletta Mayer) and McKinley Merritt (Millie Davis), and Steve Sherman (Al Manners, Henry, Eddie Fenton).
Gobel’s creative team features scenic designer Christopher Pickart; costume designer Devario D. Simmons; Lighting Designer Joshua J. Mullady; and Sound Designer and Composer Joe Cerqua.
In January, CBT announced that it had been approved by the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) for a Grants for Arts Projects award of $15,000 which will support the hiring of guest artists for this production of Trouble in Mind. This grant is one of 1,251 Grants for Arts Projects awards totaling nearly $28.8 million that were announced by the NEA as part of its first round of fiscal year 2023 grants.
