A group of students and faculty are developing a project in the HopKins Black Box Theater based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel and the Academy Award-winning film “To Kill a Mockingbird.”
The project, “13 Ways to Kill a Mockingbird,” is based on the poem “Thirteen Ways to Look at a Blackbird” by Wallace Stevens.
It is an experimental theater project — a type of installation art similar to a museum exhibit.
The project will allow the audience to walk around to different exhibits, which include live performances and monitors with projections of footage on walls, said Patricia Suchy, an associate professor of communication studies and director of the production.
The project is scheduled to run in the HopKins Black Box Theater April 21-25.
Bradley Furnish, a studio art senior, said participants will be shooting interviews with University students in the Quad today at 2:30 p.m. if weather permits.
The crew will be looking for students, faculty and staff who are interested in sharing their experiences for the
project.
Suchy said she is interested in capturing what attracts people to the story, its influences and people’s favorite and most-remembered scenes from the story.
Suchy said she became interested in basing a production on the novel because of the level of discussion it opened in classes she taught.
“Some [secondary] schools censured the novel and so of course students went and read it anyway,” Suchy said.
The production team plans to travel to Monroe, the setting of the fictional story, to capture footage of the sites in the
novel and to get reactions
from Monroe residents, Suchy said.
The Department of Communication Studies Black Box Theater and the Laboratory for Creative Arts Technology co-sponsored the production.
The production staff plans to get footage from the LSU Law School because the novel teaches legal ethics dealing with race and justice, Suchy said.
The book tells the story of a major trial and a lawyer, Atticus Finch, who uses his moral judgment to seek justice for his innocent client.
Suchy said the character is well known in the legal justice community because of the ethics and pursuit of justice he practiced.
She said she has encountered lawyers and law students who said they became lawyers because of the book and character.
The production team also plans to shoot footage at the Governor’s Mansion.
“The goal [of the production] is to make the viewer the main character,” Suchy said. “Our hope is to do the work of reflecting the text. We want to encourage people to talk about issues with gender, race and justice.”
Suchy said the novel demonstrates how a high-profile trial “causes the culture to question itself.”
She said there still are issues relevant to the story on campus and in the community that will cause people to reflect and have discussions.
She said the Baton Rouge serial killer trial may overlap in the minds of the audiences because of the enormity and sensitivity of the trial. But she said she is not making any
references to it out of respect for the victims and their families.
Suchy said she hopes students will realize “novels, artistic works and movies we think of as entertainment serve a purpose in our culture.”