Jackson Free Press

The New Year brings a new play to New Stage Theatre: "Gee's Bend" is the story of a community of black quiltmakers—all women—in Gee's Bend, Ala.

Officially named Boykin, Gee's Bend is a community isolated in a u-curve of the Alabama River. After the Civil War, the freedmen became sharecroppers, and then bought their farms from the government during the Great Depression. Gee's Bend became a self-sufficient, almost entirely black community.

Gee's Bend's only timely route to the nearest town was a ferry crossing the Alabama River. The alternative was a two-hour drive to nearby Camden, and the whites in power took out the ferry in 1962 to stop them from voting. It was restored only two years ago.

But the community was still a force during the Civil Rights Movement. Martin Luther King Jr. spoke in the hamlet just before the Selma march of 1965, now a scene in the play.

A number of social workers and art dealers have since visited the community and brought the traditional quilts the women of Gee's Bend were making to national attention in high-end art galleries, and the community very quickly rose to national fame.

However, the play is not about the quilts.

"The play is inspired by those women's stories, and it's not about quilt-making," said Francine Reynolds, the director of "Gee's Bend." "It's about these women and their family, and what they go through."

Playwright Elizabeth Gregory Wilder spent a lot of time with the quilters of Gee's Bend, and her play spans six decades with a cast of only three women and one man.

Reynolds is currently casting the play. She hopes to make this production into a community education event, part of her strategy to strengthen the youth programs of New Stage Theatre. She hopes some of the actual Gee's Bend quilters can visit Jackson to show their work and sing the songs they're now famous for.

"Gee's Bend" opens at New Stage Theatre Jan. 27, 2009, and runs through Feb. 8. Tickets are $22; $18 for students and seniors. For more info, call 601-948-3533.