FRANKLIN — The Franklin Stage Company (FSC), Delaware County’s renowned professional summer theater, located on Academy Street in Franklin, will present a new play by Kyle Bass entitled The Civilities. FSC began developing the work through a 2024 Support for Artists Grant from the New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA). The commission is written by the author of Possessing Harriet and Toliver & Wakeman, which FSC produced during their 2019 and 2023 summer seasons. The production will be directed by Gilbert McCauley and will feature actors Wynn Harmon and Taji Senior. “It’s wonderful to have the opportunity to bring this new play to life and to produce our second world premiere,” said Executive Artistic Director Patricia Buckley.
Set in a small town in Upstate New York in 1936 (the 75th anniversary of the beginning of the Civil War), The Civilities introduces Blessah Hart, a dynamic young Black graduate student of History and Anthropology at Cornell University, and M. Silas Jackson, an elderly white poet and Confederate army veteran who has resided in the North for over 60 years. Conducting research for her graduate thesis on the narratives of surviving Confederates living in the North, Blessah reaches out to “son of the South” poet Jackson, whose poetry critiques and romanticizes the Old South, and is rich with allusions about the nation’s history and enigmatic clues about the poet’s own past. As researcher and subject, Blessah and Silas form an unlikely connection. But their relationship is tested as Blessah’s perceptive nature leads her to “read between the lines” of Silas’s work, prompting questions that strain his patience.
When Blessah travels to Silas’s hometown in the South to uncover the missing pieces of his story, neither historian nor poet is prepared for the agonizing revelation her research uncovers: a discovery linking them to a history of bondage, birthright, and bloodshed, compelling a reckoning with the wounds of the past and the wrongs of the present. The Civilities explores profound questions about heritage, race, civility, and the tension between history and literature as two means of conveying truth.
The Franklin Stage Company season and the play run through August 23 at Chapel Hall, 25 Institute Street in Franklin, NY. Please note all evening shows have a curtain time of 7:30 pm. The show will also have Saturday matinees at 3:00 pm and Sunday shows at 5:00 pm. General Seating. Admission is free—suggested donation is $25 per person. For more information and reservations, visit www.franklinstagecompany.org. Programming at the Franklin Stage Company is made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Kathy Hochul and the New York State Legislature.
