Purlie

August 2 – September 29, 2013
Approximate running time: 2.5 hours with 1 intermission

Messiah Equiano directs this witty and energetic
1970s Broadway musical sensation based on Ossie Davis’
play “Purlie Victorious”.

In the early day of the civil rights movement, a Southern plantation owner, Ol’
Cap’n Cotchipee, holds his sharecroppers in virtual slavery. Now Ol’ Cap’n Cotchipee
is dead. His glorious funeral shakes the halls of Big Bethel, the church he sought to
destroy. The man on the pulpit is Purlie Victorious, a new kind of preacher man, who
sings the praises of life rather than the uncertainties of life in the hereafter. But it
wasn’t long ago when Purlie arrived with Lutiebelle and a scheme to deceive the Ol’
Cap’n into giving him money that rightfully belonged to his mother, money that would
buy Big Bethel.