The set is ready, the actors and actresses are prepared for their roles, and “A Lesson Before Dying,” a Nicholls Players’ performance, is ready to take action tonight in Talbot Auditorium at 7:30.
“A Lesson Before Dying,” originally written by Ernest J. Gaines and adapted into a play by Romulus Linney, is the story of a man named, Grant Wiggins, played by Norman Edmonds Jr., an English junior from Thibodaux. It is set in a southern Louisiana town in the 1940s. Wiggins struggles with the oppression of his race and is given the hapless task of educating a man, Jefferson, played by Travis McCloud, a freshman from Thibodaux, on death row for a crime he did not commit. Jefferson’s godmother, Mrs. Emma, played by Monique Bolian, an allied health professional practice junior from Kenner, convinces the cynical Wiggins to help Jefferson “die like a man.” Wiggins, wanting so badly to escape southern life and elope with his lover Vivian, played by Christina Berry, a general studies senior from Chicago, must teach a man how to die while still learning how to live himself.
The scene opens on an original three-set stage, focusing on the central set, the jailhouse, where Jefferson is imprisoned. In the jail house scene, a solitary light bulb hangs from the ceiling, illuminating reddish-brown brick walls that have been blackened on the surface with the harshness of time and whitened in the crevices with the accumulation of dust. At stage right, there is an old barred window, setting the restricted, eerie mood of the jailhouse and an antique, wooden table beneath the window with folded chairs on either side, one of which Grant Wiggins prepares for Miss Emma in the opening scene. At the center, there are two long, wooden benches on either side of a doorless passage leading to a hallway and a closed door at stage left.
Miss Emma, a warmly dressed, elderly woman with whitening hair and glasses enters the set of the first scene of the jailhouse, followed by Grant Wiggins, dressed nicely in a suit and top hat. With evidence of careful analysis and study, the dialogue between Edmonds and Bolian gives the audience a feeling of reality.
The second scene reveals the second of the three-in-one set at stage left. The set is a small, old-fashioned schoolroom with fading wooden walls and Wiggins, a schoolteacher, seated at a desk in the center. The desk, like the walls, is wooden but less worn than the walls, and a blackboard is in the center of the back wall of the set.
At stage right is the last of the three-part set of the play, the Rainbow Club, a place where Wiggins often meets with his girlfriend Vivian for conversation and a drink. The walls of the set are old and red with random tears in the fabric revealing brick underneath. At the center of the set is a small two-person table with a flowery tablecloth covering the surface and a single candle in the middle. An old window, with a lit sign saying “Rainbow Club” is at the right of the table, complemented by a frilly red window curtain beneath it. A matching curtain conceals a door at stage left of the window, giving the scene a simple, yet comfortable homelike aura.
The fourth scene between Jefferson and Miss Emma at the jailhouse is especially captivating as it really explains the purpose of the play. McCloud gives a great emotional display as Jefferson as he argues bitterly with his godmother about his worth as a human being, comparing himself to a hog. Bolian as Miss Emma responds in a stern, yet distinctly maternal manner, helping more to build her character as the thoughtful, caring role of Jefferson’s godmother.
According to Scott Carter, literary adviser of the play and an adjunct instructor at Nicholls, the novel and play versions differ in a couple of significant ways. Many of the details in the book are told through exposition as it opposed to the events actually happening. Since some characters in the novel, such as Henri Pichot and his wife, are not in the play, viewers don’t get to see an important discussion between Miss Emma and Henri Pichot; however, it is talked about on stage.
Most of the performers are first-time actors, and the actors have managed to put together a “really good play,” according to Carter.
“(I think that the play) encourages other people to try acting,” Carter said. “I think everybody who watches the play should read the novel; it’s a really good book, and it offers a different appeal than the play does.
“Novels appeal to your mind strictly; you can imagine sound, sights, and people. (However), on a stage, (the visual and auditory elements) are right there in front of you.”
The overall atmosphere of the play is interesting and unique, and it is sure to be a treat to anyone who attends.