To Kill A Mockingbird
Excerpt from a review of “To Kill a Mockingbird” by Jeff Coplon:
Great risks bear rich rewards. The Brave New World Repertory’s presentation last night, before an overflow crowd numbering more than a thousand, was great theater of the rarest sort, the kind of experience that merges art and artists, artists and audience. With most of the action only curb-high, and no need for ambitious sets, the company broke the wall between show and reality more magically than the most elaborate indoor production.
In a quarter-century of theater-going in New York, never have I seen an audience as integrated as the one that took their folding seats on Sunday: black and white, old and very young, with a healthy sprinkling of neighborhood teenagers. Rarely have I seen one so rapt or appreciative. That the show was free enhanced the magic; this was street theater, people’s theater, of the highest order…
Jeff Coplon is a free-lance writer living in Brooklyn. His work has been published in The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, New York, and Rolling Stone.
