Greensboro: A Requiem

On November 3, 1979, an anti–Ku Klux Klan rally was held in Greensboro, North Carolina, by members of the Communist Workers Party; with TV news cameras rolling, the protesters were attacked by members of the Klan and the American Nazi Party, who shot 13 people, killing five. On November 4, 1979, the Iranian hostage crisis began and the Greensboro massacre disappeared from the nation’s front pages. Mann’s docuplay attempts to give the incident the respect it deserves, and she’s largely successful.

Mann builds her play out of courtroom transcripts, news accounts and her own interviews with survivors, participants (Alex Gillmor plays both a Klan member and law-enforcement informer) and personalities like David Duke. A projection at the top of the show states that every word of dialogue was spoken by a real person.

The playwright makes a compelling case for the complicity of Greensboro police and the local FBI, but her best work is in laying out the human complexities and regrets. Survivors rue their naïveté and mourn their youthful idealism; a preacher notes the difference between the church and the divine; a Klan speaker says Louis Farrakhan should be a model for the KKK.

Akin’s fluid, minimalist staging allows the ensemble to shine, most in multiple roles; highlights include Peter Moore ranging from blithely bigoted Duke to a paralyzed survivor, and Lily Mojekwu’s nuanced takes on four women. But the play’s heart, oddly enough, is Gillmor’s chillingly straightforward, very human turn as its most unsympathetic character.