Balcony rear L-R: Daniela Suarez, Zahra Simpson-Stairs, Douglas Connors. Balcony front L-R: Kieran Chenier, Johnny Jordan, Chloe Rioux, Graeme McKee, Sekai Chikodzi, Greer Crosby. Below L-R: Garrett McCrea, Broghan Baker, Esme Purdy, Ken Sparrow, Cindy Chappell, Barbara Gillespie, Cathy Griffin, Jane Saunders, Lloyd Balme, Ian Butler, Donald Mitchell, Zhyon Headley, Dylan Chenier.

To Kill a Mockingbird

Left to right: Lynn Kerr, Kieran Chenier and Chloe Rioux.

Adapted from the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, To Kill a Mockingbird opens in a sleepy Alabama town in the midst of the Great Depression, where Scout and her brother, Jem, live with their widowed father, Atticus Finch.

Atticus is to defend Tom Robinson, who is accused of raping and beating a young woman. Atticus knows that because of the colour of his skin, Tom won't get a fair trial, but "simply because we were licked a hundred years before we started is no reason for us not to try to win.

Driven by an unshakeable moral conviction, Atticus defends Tom in a trial that sends violent waves through the community, and comes back to haunt his family even after the verdict. Timeless and lingering, this hard-hitting work explores prejudice, compassion and the courage to do what is right.

Left to right: Chloe Rioux, Lisah Slack, Kieran Chenier, Lloyd Balme and Donald Mitchell.

Harper Lee, the daughter of an Alabama lawyer, published To Kill a Mockingbird in 1960. It won the Pulitzer Prize for Literature and became one of the best-known and most-loved American novels of the century. Christopher Sergel's stage adaptation premiered in 1990 in Monroeville, Ala.—Harper Lee's hometown—where it has been performed annually at the Monroe County Courthouse ever since.

Christopher Sergel

Christopher Sergel was born in Iowa City in 1918. His interests and talents led him on many adventures throughout the world. As captain of the schooner Chance, he spent two years in the South Pacific; as a writer for Sports Afield magazine, he lived in the African bush for a year; as a lieutenant commander during World War II, he taught celestial navigation; as a playwright, his adaptation of Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio was seen on Broadway.

He also wrote adaptations of Cheaper By the Dozen, The Mouse That Roared, Up the Down Staircase, Fame, Black Elk Speaks and many more. He was president of the New York play publisher Dramatic Publishing from 1970 until his death in 1993.

We would like to acknowledge that this production takes place on the traditional lands of the Haudenosaunee and Anishinaabe peoples. We honour and give thanks to the land, its inhabitants and their enduring cultures.

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