An original production heads to an international theatre festival.
Augusta Mini Theatre’s “Telling Our Stories Through Poetry” will be part of the International Black Theatre Festival July 29-Aug. 3 in Winston-Salem, N.C.
“Normally they don’t do young actors. They do adult theater, but we entered it anyway,” said Tyrone Butler, Augusta Mini Theatre founder, in a recent phone interview. “The artistic director called and said ‘how did you get those students to do that? We’d like to invite you to the festival.’”
“Telling Our Stories Through Poetry” brings together poetry, chants, children’s games and history, highlighting the African American experience. It will be performed Aug. 3.
“It begins with being snatched from Africa. There’s a whole segment on that,” said the play’s director Judith Simon Butler in a Jan. 3 Augusta Good News article. “Then we move on, that in spite of those circumstances, the African American community held onto hopes and dreams. The elders became like the village leaders. The elders held onto hopes and dreams and instilled all those hopes and dreams into young people.”
It was first staged in Spring 2023, but due to a positive audience response, it was presented again in January, typically a time when the Augusta Mini Theatre performs a show that pays tribute to the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Twenty-six second through 12th graders will travel to Winston-Salem on Aug. 2 to be part of the festival.
Tyrone Butler said that the performance will be made available to student and church groups.
The theater group is in the middle of its summer fundraising campaign through July 31. The campaign helps provide scholarships for the students who take drama, dance, visual arts and music at the Deans Bridge Road campus.
Butler said other exciting news for the organization includes a long-awaited project.
On Oct. 10, the organization will break ground on its 144-seat theater which will connect to its current building.
The Augusta Mini Theatre moved into the Deans Bridge Road campus in 2008 and has been raising money for the theater for 16 years. Plans are to celebrate the new theater’s opening on the mini theater’s 50th anniversary in 2025.
Charmain Z. Brackett, the publisher of Augusta Good News and Inspiring: Women of Augusta, has covered Augusta’s news for more than 35 years and is a Georgia Press Association award winner. Reach her at charmain@augustagoodnews.com. Sign up for the newsletter here.
