The Justice Theater Project's Performance of Mark St. Germain's Best of Enemies Is Transformative

This article was published in the Triangle Review on 11 February 2023.

Before last night, I had never visited The Justice Theater Project's (JTP) home theater at the Umstead Park United Church of Christ in Raleigh, NC, where Mark St. Germain's 2012 play, entitled Best of Enemies, is playing through Sunday, Feb. 26th. This trip to Umstead Park UCC, alone, was an adventure.

The building is impressive and, on opening night Friday, Feb. 10th, enabled an intimate preshow discussion with debut director Yamila Monge, during which she eloquently displayed the gratitude and great emotional care that she, the cast, the crew, and the JTP staff took in producing this emotionally and spiritually charged play about the unlikely friendship that formed between Ku Klux Klan "Exalted Cyclops" C.P. Ellis and Civil Rights Movement hero Ann Atwater in Durham, NC. So charged was the subject matter and dialogue that an intimacy counselor was hired to protect the emotional and mental health of the actors throughout rehearsals.

As a young, Afro-Latina woman, Yamila Monge said that she wants the production to demonstrate appreciation for the difficult trailblazing of the previous generation and their glowing, though generally not well-known, examples of the healing transformation that can occur when even the most heated adversaries agree to work together and listen to one another.

On the upper tier of the set is C.P. Ellis's kitchen. Ann Atwater's sitting room is on the lower platform. Behind both, bookshelves form a wall across the back of the stage. A photo of Abraham Lincoln, a protest placard reading "Save Our Schools," American flags in different formations -- the bookshelves contain all kinds of paraphernalia of the time period, which is only 50 years ago. Above the bookshelves at center stage, a movie screen depicts dates, locations, historic photos, and the names of the prominent N.C. people whose statements are broadcast between scenes.

When the curtain rises, the movie screen reads April 4, 1968, and a Ku Klux Klan song is playing on the speakers: "Come on, show the world that you're a man; Come on and be counted -- join the Ku Klux Klan."

At a podium on the stage, KKK Exalted Cyclops C.P. Ellis is opposing federally imposed racial integration of North Carolina's public schools, warning the audience -- as if we are Unit Nine members of the United Klans of America -- that "they want to turn Durham's Hillside High into ‘darkie heaven.’”

Brian Yandle's accent and portrayal of Ellis reminded me of the "good ol' boys" that I'd met throughout my childhood in Virginia and North Carolina. The hatred in Ellis' initial scenes is palpable and visceral, although I found it hard to connect it with the anguish that Ellis felt upon his wife's death and his ghosting by Klan friends after his collaboration with Atwater.

Though I think her anger and hatred is likewise tempered, J. Ra'Chel Fowler's portrayal of Ann Atwater is regal, real, comical, and endearing all at once. Atwater's no-nonsense spirit and good reason shine brightly:

.           "Pride opens the door to every other sin there is."

.           "What you really want to do is what they did to us -- burn their schools down."

.           "A woman who can't do for herself is just as bad as the man who made her feel that way."

Fowler delivers Atwater's straightforward and often haughty statements with impeccable timing, sincerity, and wit.

DJ Brinson also successfully conjures the spirit of community organizer Bill Riddick, who ultimately convinces Atwater and Ellis to co-chair a charrette to get community input on how to best integrate local schools. Riddick's deliberately patient goodwill is immediate. Though I think Riddick's ambition is underplayed, Brinson delivers Riddick's own words of wisdom with casual confidence and believable charm: "Maybe they think of it as name calling. I call it getting acquainted."

Mark St. Germain's 2012 play, based on Osha Gray Davidson's 1996 UNC Press nonfiction book, The Best of Enemies: Race and Redemption in the New South, gives Amanda Lee Scherle her own moments to shine as C.P. Ellis' wife, Mary, who exhibits mostly passive disapproval of her husband's Klan involvement and has her own realism to impart. My favorite of her lines, because it sums up what so many of us are feeling these days, is : "In the long run, I don't think showin' up matters anymore."

When discussing the scheduling challenges that The Justice Theater Project experienced at the start of rehearsals in January, director Yamila Monge said, "When we all came together, the magic just happened."

By the end of the play, that magic was visible not only in the audience's unhesitating standing ovation, but in their teary eyes (including my own) as we exited the theater. I wish that this play could be performed at high schools and colleges across the country. Humans learn by example, and there is no better example of how to overcome the hateful division that we are experiencing today than The Justice Theater Project's reenactment of the relationship between C.P. Ellis and Ann Atwater in Best of Enemies.