History hides in corners. For instance, Passage Theatre artistic director C. Ryanne Domingues entered Trenton’s Hedgepeth-Williams Middle School for the Arts and noticed a tribute to the school’s namesakes, Gladys Hedgepeth and Berline Williams.
She learned these women sued to allow their children to integrate a school that was two blocks, as opposed to a mile, from their homes, and won.
This was in 1944, 10 years before the landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision in Brown vs. the Board of Education (of Topeka, Kansas) that opened schools all over the country to children of all backgrounds.
History in Passage’s backyard, and Domingues didn’t know about it. Few beside people who attended Hedgepeth-Williams or lived at the time did.
Once Domingues found out, she ran with the information. She had an idea to make a play about the campaign Hedgepeth and Williams waged on behalf of their and other children.
Legions were recruited to bring the play, “Janet Wide Awake: The Hedgepeth-Williams Dream,” into being. Playwrights David Lee White and Richard Bradford, the pair who worked on Passage’s dramatic collage, “The OK Trenton Project,” earlier this year would guide a script that would be written by Hedgepeth-Williams seventh graders who were supervised by teacher Chris Werner and advisers from Princeton, Rutgers, and other universities. Others pitched in, including a graduate student who researched and wrote a 50-page treatment of the Hedgepeth-Williams case and its journey from grassroots to court to changing education in Trenton forever.
“Janet Wide Awake” was performed by the seventh, some of them now eighth graders, directed by Andrew Binger, on April 1,2, and 3. A pandemic and other obstacles delayed the finished product, but the students got to present their work, and it was a moving, invigorating occasion.
A surprising one, too! Given the academic setting, and the number of teachers and professors involved, one might expect a straightforward recitation of the Hedgepeth-Williams story from the day Gladys and Berline decide to take action to the triumphant moment when Janet and Leon, the respective children of the litigants, left their distant segregated school to enter what was at the time Trenton Junior High 2. No! Not by a long shot.
The Hedgepeth-Williams students took obvious and passionate charge of Passage’s initiative and crafted it a way that mattered to them.
The history is there, but it peeps in from the corners, incorporated into a story about going to school now, in 2022, and incidentally discovering how one’s school holds an important place in the national civil rights story and why some of the school’s traditions need to be maintained, especially when threatened by proposed changes in Trenton education policy.
White, Bradford, and their young co-writers go beyond the events of 1944, seen in several sequences as “Janet Wide Awake” unfolds, and away from the current events the students wanted to background history, such as the 1896 Plessy vs. Ferguson case by which the Supreme Court ruled “separate but equal” was a legitimate interpretation of Constitutional law despite the wording of the 14th and 15th Amendments.
Nehemiah Gilbert is particularly effective in playing Homer Plessy on the fateful train ride that led to his suit and made his case of the most famous in American jurisprudence (or lack thereof).
The students who appear in several modern-day scenes, many of them centered on an election for school president, put history in perspective.
History is nice and all, and good to know, but when it comes to day-to-day at school, the real concerns are the issues raised by the candidates for president. Emily Rodriguez, who plays the born politician, the serious and much determined April, who will no doubt be a candidate many times in her adult years, stands for longer lunches and the right to wear torn jeans.
Her opponent, the popular Brady, played by the lively Jonathan Taylor with confidence and stage presence to spare, is more into conspiracy theories, such as making sure actual geology is taught, science that assures, as Brady finds self-evident, that the world is flat. “Did you ever see a round map?” he asks during a campaign rally. ‘Yes, it’s called a globe,” says Eddie, played with smartest-in-the-room eye-rolling by Randall Hernandez Romero.
The great lesson here is how gifted the Hedgepeth-Williams students are at satire and making fun of matters, aside from flat earth theory, that are discussed in lunchrooms and hallways.
The keeper of the history is Janet, played with dignity and professional poise by Renai Morgan. This Janet is a newcomer to Hedgepeth-Williams and takes an immediate interest in its history and expresses immediate outrage when a directive seems destined to obliterate the school’s place in the civil rights canon.
Janet has dreamed about her namesake, the youngster Berline Williams fought in court to have educated at the school nearest her home. She imagines the original Janet’s first day. The play, “Janet Wide Awake” is what she experiences once she’s risen and notices similarities between her dream and her reality.
Janet knows Brady is a lost cause in dealing with a genuine issue, but she enlists the earnest April and other students to stand with her. The spirit of Hedgepeth-Williams lives on.
Of course, the history is covered, both by the narration Richard Bradford supplies while playing history teacher introducing Plessy vs. Ferguson, and the Hedgepeth-Williams case.
Wonderfully instructive in several roles is Monah Yancy, who plays all of the mothers involved, the current Janet’s, Berline Williams, and Gladys Hedgepeth. Yancy provides important insight and shows how the past affects the present as she appears in her various roles.
Yancy, and through her White, Bradford, and the students show how history can become immediate instead of dry by coming is doses and having an effect instead of being meted out like medicine.
Johanna Tolentino adds to a number of excellent recent performances by playing the principal of Hedgepeth-Williams, explaining rationales that she has to live with whether she agrees with them or not and dealing with rambunctious, precocious children as we see in the play.
Participating students besides those mentioned are Cristal Castillo, Yanisha Pujols, Josh Seigle, Yans Martinez Gomez, Brandon Taveras Fidel, Uri Gonzalez, Justin Rivera, Justin Gudiel, Troy Phillips, Kevin Thadal, and A.J. Crawford.
Andrew Binger marshalled them into an efficient and likeable ensemble who had fun while making points and being disciplined in their approach.
Sets and props by Marie Laster, lighting by Victoria Davidjohn, costumes by Tiffany Brown, and sound by Anthony Martinez-Briggs suited all situations and added to “Janet Wide Awake’s” authenticity. And Alison Isenberg, Robert McGreevey, and Sabrina Jafri served as dramaturgs.
Passage Theatre is Trenton’s only nonprofit professional theater. Its next production is “Group!,” running May 5 through 22. www.passagetheatre.org.
