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Touring Student Actors To Give Hartweg Play

Touring Student Actors To Give Hartweg Play image
Parent Issue
Day
24
Month
August
Year
1968
Copyright
Copyright Protected
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Donated by the Ann Arbor News. © The Ann Arbor News.
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[photo inset] Hartweg Discusses ‘The Pit’ With Methodist Minister Kendall Cowing

Touring Student Actors To Give Hartweg Play

The Uninvited Company, an interracial drama group composed of students from Carleton College, Northfield, Minn., will present “The Pit” at 9 and 11:15 a.m. Sunday at First Methodist Church, and at 8 p.m. at Trinity Evangelical Lutheran Church.

The Uninvited Company was formed after the assassination of Martin Luther King last April, and was part of ferment on the Northfield campus in response to the challenge by Negro students to white students to “stop talking and do something.”

Since its formation, the Drama Group has been presenting “The Pit,” a play about a person trapped in a hole in the ground while friends and neighbors ignore his predicament. They have performed before white suburban audiences in the Chicago area and elsewhere in the Midwest.

The play was written six years ago in Los Angeles by Norman Hartweg, now a student at the University.

At that time, Hartweg was writing screen plays and directing Theater Event. “The Pit” won the John Golden Award from the Tulane Drama Review and was published by the magazine.

The one-act play has been produced by the Boston affiliate on the National Education Television network and has been performed by drama groups all over the country.

Hartweg will participate in discussions of the play with the Carleton drama group and members of the congregation after both performances at First Methodist Church.

Among members of the cast is Martha Ratliff, a member of First Methodist.

“It’s pompous for college students to tell people what they should think and how they should act, but we want to raise the issues and have people at least consider them,” says William Tobey, a member of the group. “We’re here to inquire — not to accuse.”

David Bartlett, a junior from Green Bay, Wis., says, “We won’t mold attitudes overnight. We want to be a catalyst to bring white consciences to self-awareness.”