The local African-American theater group PassinArt presents Bourbon at the Border at the Ethos Interstate Firehouse Cultural Center.
The story of couple who wanted to change the world when they joined the civil rights movement in 1964 comes to life in a local theater production of Bourbon at the Border.
Portland’s African-American producing theater group PassinArts is performing the riveting play and moving story of love, pain, friendship and freedom at the Ethos Interstate Firehouse Cultural Center, 5340 N. Interstate Ave. Shows are Thursday at 7:30 p.m. and Fridays and Saturdays at 8 p.m. with Sunday matinees at 3 p.m. through Nov. 5.
The production follows May and Charlie, a couple joined hundreds of other Americans on a journey to Mississippi in the summer of 1964 for a massive voter registration drive. They had no idea their lives were about to change forever.
As students at Howard University, their campus activism had been simply met with annoying calls to their parents and constant threats of expulsion. The stakes, however, in Mississippi were a lot higher. White supremacists, outraged at the challenge to their segregated way of life, responded with violence. Three civil rights workers were killed and many others were wounded.
You’re invited to come take this journey with May and Charlie as they try to make sense of how their dreams of changing the world changed their worlds forever.
The production is made possible by a grant from the Regional Arts & Cultural Council, Work for Arts, Black United Fund of Oregon and The Collins Foundation, Meyers Memorial Trust, and PGE Foundation.
