When English Professor Linda Bannister was selected as the first recipient of the Daum professorship award at Loyola Marymount University’s Bellarmine College of Liberal Arts, she had ambitious plans.
The yearlong appointment comes with a $10,000 research fund, which Bannister put toward producing “Turpentine Jake,” a play she co-wrote, about the lives of black turpentine workers trapped in a form of legal slavery in early 20th century Florida.
The play, which was staged at LMU’s Del Rey Theatre in August 2008, has now been recognized with two nominations for 2009 NAACP Theatre Awards. LMU alumna Lauren Bernard ’04 was nominated for costume design, and actress Rae’ven Larrymore Kelly got a nod for best lead female. The awards will be announced Aug. 31.
“It’s just tremendous news,” Bannister said. “We couldn’t be happier. When they sent their representatives to see the play last August, it was a pie-in-the-sky notion that we would actually get a nomination. To actually get the letter saying that we had been nominated for two different awards – that was pretty exciting.”
Nabbing a pair of nominations for a prestigious theater award gives the play a better chance of being picked up for a future production, Bannister said. Not that she and her co-creator, James Hurd Jr., have been letting “Turpentine Jake” sit around since the LMU production ended.
There have been two staged readings of the play this year, at the Great Plains Theater Conference in Omaha, Neb., and the Juneteenth Urban Arts Festival at Brookdale Community College in New Jersey. In addition, actors performed scenes from the play July 31 and Aug. 1 at the Georgia Agrirama, an agricultural museum in Tifton, Ga.
The Agrirama performance featured a bit of historical relevance that meshed well with the play about camp workers who spent fourteen hours a day harvesting pine gum from trees to make turpentine. “They have the last functioning turpentine still in the United States on their grounds,” Bannister said. “They also had a rusted-out, 1910 jail cell that they used a forklift to transport from nearby, so our scene that takes place in the jail was actually performed in a real-life cell from that era.”
So far, “Turpentine Jake,” starring Hurd in the title role as his own grandfather, has been well received each time it’s been performed. Bannister is cautiously optimistic for further success.
“We’re all hoping to get that elusive off-Broadway, or Broadway, or Mark Taper production,” she said. “I’m just grateful every time someone tells me they liked the play. I’ve heard that a lot from colleagues, from people I respect, who I know have a lot of keen critical insight. When your colleagues tell you that, you really feel validated.”