{"id":3992,"date":"2010-09-24T21:00:35","date_gmt":"2010-09-25T02:00:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/?p=3992"},"modified":"2010-09-24T19:26:57","modified_gmt":"2010-09-25T00:26:57","slug":"new-play-at-apsu-fuses-greek-tragedy-with-gang-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/2010\/09\/24\/new-play-at-apsu-fuses-greek-tragedy-with-gang-life\/","title":{"rendered":"New Play at APSU Fuses Greek Tragedy with Gang Life"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-thumbnail wp-image-47306\" title=\"Austin Peay State University\" src=\"http:\/\/www.clarksvilleonline.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/09\/apsu-logo-200x123.jpg\" alt=\"Austin Peay State University\" width=\"200\" height=\"123\" \/><strong>Clarksville, TN<\/strong> \u2013 The life of Stanley Tookie Williams, a founder of the notorious street gang the Crips, was filled with moments of such sorrow and attempts at redemption that it could have been a Greek tragedy.<\/p>\n<p>At least, that\u2019s what playwright Gaye Jeffers thought when she fused Williams\u2019 story with Sophocles play \u201cPhiloctetes,\u201d to create a new work, \u201cPhilo.\u201d The play has its world premiere at 7:30pm, September 29th, in the Trahern Theater on the Austin Peay State University campus. It will run through October 3rd.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt tells the story of a death row inmate on a search for redemption, and trying to deal with the sort of world he helped create by the founding of this gang, called the Greeks in the play,\u201d Chris Hardin, the play\u2019s director and assistant professor of theater, said. \u201cTheir rival gang is the Trojans. It\u2019s a really intriguing script, a really interesting story. I think it will fascinate a lot of people that it has any roots in ancient drama at all, because it feels so contemporary.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The play was written over the course of the summer when Jeffers, a professor at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, visited the APSU campus for a workshop with drama students.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe did a series of readings with the playwright,\u201d Hardin said. \u201cShe listened, changed things, rewrote things, talked with the students about her characters, what they thought about the characters, and she used that to inform how the play actually wound up being shaped.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The play is loosely based on Williams\u2019 life. In reality, the former Crip founder went to jail for murder, and while on death row, he denounced his violent past and gang culture. He wrote several books, including works geared toward children, but he was executed in 2005.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Clarksville, TN \u2013 The life of Stanley Tookie Williams, a founder of the notorious street gang the Crips, was filled with moments of such sorrow and attempts at redemption that it could have been a Greek tragedy. At least, that\u2019s what playwright Gaye Jeffers thought when she fused Williams\u2019 story with Sophocles play \u201cPhiloctetes,\u201d to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4],"tags":[23,262,4963,4959,4958,4961,4960,4956,4957,4962,4964],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4xGYI-12o","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3992"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3992"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3992\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3994,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3992\/revisions\/3994"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3992"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3992"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3992"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}