Based on Ernest J. Gaines' National Book Critics Circle Award-winning
novel, Romulus Linney's A Lesson Before Dying is set in a small
Louisiana Cajun community in the late 1940s. Jefferson, a young
illiterate black man, is falsely convicted of murder and is sentenced to
death. Grant Wiggins, the plantation schoolteacher, agrees to talk with
the condemned man. The disheartened Wiggins had once harbored dreams of
escaping from his impoverished youth, yet he returned to his home town
after university, to teach children whose lives seemed as unpromising as
Jefferson's. The two men forge a bond as they come to understand what it
means to resist and defy one's own fate.
An L.A. Theatre Works full cast performance featuring:
Rick Foucheux as Paul Bonin
Keith Glover as Grant Wiggins
Jamahl Marsh as Jefferson
Linda Powell as Vivian Baptiste
Jefferson A. Russell as Reverend Moses Ambrose
Jerry Whiddon as Sam Guidry
Beatrice Winde as Emma Glenn
Directed by Nick Olcott. Recorded at Voice of America in Washington D.C.