In keeping with its mission of artistic excellence and community engagement, Pure Life Theatre Company will host educational and community engagement events in conjunction with the production. All educational and community engagement events are free and open to the public, offering audiences opportunities for dialogue, learning, and a deeper connection to August Wilson’s work and legacy.

​

List of Community Engagement Events with visiting Scholar, Foster Dickson

​

Friday, February 27, 6:30 PM: Reception, followed by a pre-show discussion.

​Convict Leasing and Joe Turner

August Wilson’s play Joe Turner’s Come and Gone reveals the dehumanizing effects of the convict lease system in the American South. As the play slowly reveals the reasons behind Herald Loomis’s mysterious and sometimes disturbing persona, we reach the revelation that the systematic kidnapping and imprisonment of African-descended people extended from the slave trade of the seventeenth through nineteenth centuries well into Jim Crow-era practices like convict leasing in the twentieth century. This one-hour presentation, designed for college undergraduates, will discuss the play and its historical context, seeking to cultivate a greater understanding of the social and psychological impacts on African American individuals and families. A one-hour discussion period would follow the presentation. 

​

Saturday, February 28, after the show at 5:30 PM, includes refreshments:

The Southern Roots of August Wilson’s Plays: August Wilson’s Century Cycle offers audiences portrayals of the African American experience in the twentieth century, rooted in the culture and history of the Southern states. Because of the realities of American slavery and later Jim Crow, the South has historically been where most African Americans have lived. These facts mean that many of Wilson’s characters, plots, and conflicts stem from a way of life developed in the South, whether for better or for worse. This ninety-minute presentation for general audiences will examine Southern backstories in The Piano Lesson, Fences, Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, and Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom.

​

Sunday, March 1, after the show at 5:30 PM, includes refreshments:

Seeing August Wilson through Albert Murray’s Eyes: This social justice-centered presentation will present the ideas of critic, essayist, and novelist Albert Murray to consider August Wilson’s plays as “equipment for living” in modern times. Though the two men were born nearly thirty years apart and were raised in very different places – Murray in rural Alabama and Wilson in urban Pennsylvania – Murray’s ideas, such as “antagonistic cooperation” and the “blues idiom,” provide ways to regard the messages in Wilson’s plays as universally applicable. Throughout Murray’s writing, there was a pervasive sentiment that, even in the face of life's harshness, one must keep pushing forward, using every resource and asset available, with the goal of “affirmation.” This one-hour presentation, which introduces the ideas and connections, would lead to an open discussion, inviting participants to consider and share their perspectives.

Foster Dickson is a scholar, artist, and cultural thinker from Montgomery, Alabama. His work centers on Black history, memory, and community voice. Using education, performance, and dialogue, Dixon explores how storytelling preserves legacy, deepens understanding, and connects the past to contemporary life.