{"id":62006,"date":"2013-05-10T19:15:30","date_gmt":"2013-05-10T19:15:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/community\/?p=3118"},"modified":"2013-05-10T19:15:30","modified_gmt":"2013-05-10T19:15:30","slug":"history-floods-the-stage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/2013\/05\/10\/history-floods-the-stage\/","title":{"rendered":"History Floods the Stage"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

See newsroom story and photo gallery here<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

One hundred years after the natural disaster that changed Dayton, Ohio, forever, Wright State University restaged its celebrated original play 1913: The Great Dayton Flood<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Billed as an \u201cepic parable with gospel blues,\u201d 1913<\/em> debuted on the Festival Playhouse stage in 1996. The play with music was based on Allan W. Eckert\u2019s Pulitzer-nominated book Time of Terror: The Great Dayton Flood<\/em> and was adapted for the stage by W. Stuart McDowell, chair of the Wright State Department of Theatre, Dance,
\nand Motion Pictures, and then-student\u00a0Timothy J. Nevits.<\/p>\n

Through careful research, McDowell and Nevits added many real-life characters not found in Eckert\u2019s book, particularly African Americans. They added, for example, W. G. Sloan, whose story they discovered in the NCR archives. Sloan saved 375 stranded people in a flat-bottomed boat that he commandeered at gunpoint. They also added Mrs. Stanton, who busts through the roof of her house to escape the rising waters at the end of the play\u2019s first act.<\/p>\n

The original production was a resounding success. It was invited to play at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., as part of the 1997 American College Theatre Festival and won a record number of the festival\u2019s awards. Later that year, the show played four sold-out performances at Dayton\u2019s own Victoria Theatre (a historical location where scenes from the play actually took place). The audiences for those performances included several flood survivors.<\/p>\n

In addition to the elements that made the first production such a hit\u2014including recorded narration by Martin Sheen, Ruby Dee, and Ossie Davis\u2014the 2013 incarnation was infused with new material. \u201cWe\u2019ve given new life to this great story,\u201d said McDowell.<\/p>\n

The new soundtrack included original compositions written by local Dayton artist\/musicians Michael and Sandy Bashaw and played on the couple\u2019s unique collection of metal \u201csound sculptures.\u201d The show featured stirring gospel melodies sung a cappella<\/em> by the cast. Senior dance major Nikki Wetter created inventive choreography that had actors realistically swirling through invisible waters. In the opening scene, the cast used movement to illustrate the three ominous air masses that fatefully collided in March 1913 to produce that deadly rainfall.<\/p>\n

The 21 actors in the cast portrayed more than 150 Daytonians, from famous historical figures like John H. Patterson to obscure\u2014but no less real\u2014individuals like Mildred Young and George McClintock. Once again, the cast dove into intensive research in the Wright State University Libraries Special Collections and Archives. They visited the cemeteries where many of the characters they played are buried and the actual locations where many of the scenes take place.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen we went downtown and we saw the water lines, that\u2019s when it really hit me, how real this really was,\u201d said senior acting major Cyndii Johnson, who played the aforementioned Mrs. Stanton. \u201cWe tried to jump up and touch the lines, but no matter what we did, we couldn\u2019t reach it. That\u2019s when it hit home the hardest.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIn 1995, shortly before my junior year at Wright State, I was enlisted to assist department chair W. Stuart McDowell with a new play\u20141913: The Great Dayton Flood. Over the course of a year, Stuart and I dug through countless dusty photographs and news articles, hunted down gravestones, and met with over a dozen eclectic historians and archivists. It was the most amazing experience an aspiring writer could have hoped for.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

However, by the end of the year Stuart and I still felt something was missing. So in a Dayton Daily News article we left my phone number asking any 1913 flood survivors out there to call with their stories. We hoped someone would bite.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Returning from my parents\u2019 that weekend, I discovered that my answering machine was full. Not only was it full\u2014but my phone was still ringing from a multitude of octo- and nonagenarians with stories to tell. Fortunately, by then the play had been cast and a small army of student actors, armed with microphones, went out to confer with some of the very people they would
\nsoon portray.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Suddenly, these weren\u2019t characters in a play anymore. These were people. What emerged in the production that fall wasn\u2019t simply the staging of a flood, but a hundred moments of humanity surrounding one. It was a lesson in writing, in theatre, and\u2014most importantly\u2014in life from those who had
\nreally lived it.\u201d<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

\u2014Timothy J. Nevits<\/strong><\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

See newsroom story and photo gallery here One hundred years after the natural disaster that changed Dayton, Ohio, forever, Wright State University restaged its celebrated original play 1913: The Great Dayton Flood. Billed as an \u201cepic parable with gospel blues,\u201d … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26,"featured_media":60402,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[722,747,4827,715],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-62006","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-academics","category-liberal-arts","category-magazine","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62006","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/26"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=62006"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62006\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/60402"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=62006"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=62006"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=62006"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}