PLAY GUIDE
The Watsons Go to
Birmingham – 1963
An adaptation of the novel by Christopher Paul Curtis
By Reginald André Jackson
Presented on the LCT Main Stage: February 14–26
418 W. Short Street
Lexington, KY 40507
859.254.4546
www.lctonstage.org
Show Sponsors:
Major Contributors:
Dear Educator Lexington Children’s Theatre is proud to be producing our 78th season of plays for young people and their families.
As an organization that values the arts and education, we have created this Play Guide for teachers to utilize in
conjunction with seeing a play at LCT.
Our Play Guides are designed to be a valuable tool in two ways: helping you prepare your students for the enriching
performance given by LCT’s performers, as well as serving as an educational tool for extending the production
experience back into your classroom.
We designed each activity to assist in achieving the Kentucky Academic Standards (KAS), including the National
Core Arts Standards for Theatre. Teachers have important voices at LCT, and we rely heavily on your input. If you
have comments or suggestions about our Play Guides, show selections, or any of our programming, your thoughts
are greatly appreciated. Please email Jeremy Kisling, our Associate Artistic Director in Charge of Education, at
[email protected].
Please use the Teacher Response form following a performance. We are thrilled that you rely on LCT to
provide your students a quality theatrical experience, and we hope this resource helps you in your classroom.
LCT’s Education Department
The mission of our education programming
The mission of Lexington Children’s Theatre’s Education Department
is to provide students of all ages with the means to actively
explore the beauty, diversity, complexity, and challenges of the
world around them through the dramatic process. We strive for
young people to develop their own creative voice, their imagination,
and their understanding of drama and its role in society.
Your role in the play
You may wish to have a discussion with your class about your upcoming
LCT experience and their role as audience members. Remind your
students that theatre can only exist with an audience. Your students’
energy and response directly affects the actors onstage. The quality of
the performance depends as much on the audience as it does on each of
the theatre professionals behind the scenes and on stage.
Young audiences should know that watching live theatre is not like
watching more familiar forms of entertainment; they cannot pause or
rewind us like a DVD, there are no commercials for bathroom breaks,
nor can they turn up the volume to hear us if someone else is talking. Your students are encouraged to listen and
watch the play intently, so that they may laugh and cheer for their favorite characters when it is appropriate.
At the end of the play, applause is an opportunity for your students to thank the actors, while the actors are thanking
you for the role you played as an audience.
What to know - before the show!
Play Synopsis
The Watsons are just an average American family, with all of the
quirks and frustrations you may find in your own. Our story begins
in Flint, Michigan with our narrator, Kenny, living his day-to-day life
being a misunderstood middle child and outcast. His older brother,
Byron, is a known troublemaker and loves to tests his limits, and
his parents’ patience, with his crazy antics. Wilona, the mother;
Daniel, the father; and Joetta, the youngest Watson are also major
characters in our story –tThe Watson family under takesa literal,
and figurative journey throughout our tale.
One day after school, Kenny hears his brother Byron in the
bathroom reenacting a famous World War II battle complete
with airplane noises, and to their parents’ dismay, matches. Once
Byron is caught with matches in the bathroom by his mother she
has had enough and decides that she must send Byron to her
mother in Birmingham, Alabama. With Grandma Sands on board,
the Watsons begin their journey and travel in their trusty “Brown
Bomber” from Flint all the way to Birmingham. Once they have settled in Grandma Sands’ house and have gotten
over the initial shock of meeting her male friend, Mr. Roberts, the changes in Byron’s behavior are a relief. Kenny,
shocked by Byron’s change of behavior, begins to act out and venture into the dangerous Wool Pooh (whirlpool)
that Grandma Sands warned the boys about. After nearly drowning, and being saved by Byron, Kenny is distraught.
After the effects of the Wool Pooh have subsided, Kenny goes to pick up Joetta, his little sister, from church one
afternoon, but instead find himself a part of history and witnesses the 16th Avenue Baptist Church bombing and fears
that Joetta is inside. After Joetta has been found and the Watsons have been reunited, they realize more than ever
how precious family is and how in an instant everything can change.
1963 vs. 2017
The Watsons lived in 1963; it is a very different era than the one we live in today. The clothes, music, food,
technology, and cars were very different than what we see now.
In small groups, ask your students to choose one of the
aforementioned categories and have your students list the differences.
Advances in technology have greatly affected almost everything
in our lives. For example, in 1963 there were no microwaves. How
would that change what you eat and how food is prepared? The
groups should work to find old advertisements or pictures of life in
1963. Have each group give a presentation on the differences from
the Watsons lifestyle and the way thier families live today.
Birmingham, Alabama, 2017
W.6.8; W.6.7
What to know - before the show!
Wilona’s Notebook of States
Wilona plans to document all the states she and her family drive through on their trip from Flint,
Michigan, to Birmingham, Alabama. Use pushpins and yarn to chart the trip on a map, down I-75
beginning in Flint and ending in Birmingham. The Watsons would have passed through Kentucky –
what cities lie on I-75? What landmarks and sights would you suggest that the Watson see on their
route if they took the trip today? Research each state that the family passes through and the major
cities along I-75. Discuss what the Watsons might have seen in 1963 as well as today.
Next, plan a trip from Flint to Birmingham. See if you can answer the following questions:
1. How many miles is it from Flint to Birmingham?
2. What are the states you will need to pass through to get to
Birmingham from Flint?
3. What are the roads that you would take to get there (use
Google maps)?
4. If the average tank of gas gets 300 miles, how many times would you need to stop to fill up?
5. If you left Flint at 8 AM, where would you be at 12 PM? What city or town could you stop at for lunch?
6. What time was it when Daniel stopped in Tennessee?
W.6.8; W.6.9.b; RIT.6.7
Privilege Basket
As students enter the classroom, give each of them a blank piece of
paper. After all have taken their seats, inform students that for this
activity, they all represent the population of the United States. They all
have the chance to strike it rich and join the upper class; all they have
to do is throw their paper into a basket you have at the front of the
room. However, all students must remain fully seated in their chairs.
As the activity progresses, students further back will begin to exclaim
the unfairness of the activity.
Use the activity as a metaphor for privilege. Too often, the people
WITH privilege don’t even see or have to acknowledge their own
privilege. Have students make a short list of the ways they might be privileged over others (gender, race, socioeconomic status). Acknowledge that privilege itself isn’t a bad thing; it’s what you do with it that matters.
SL.6.1.b; SL.6.1.d
What to know - before the show!
Contextual Article
In the epilogue to The Watsons Go To Birmingham –1963, Christopher Paul Curtis paints a vivid picture of life in
the 1960’s. Read the epilogue and answer the questions that follow:
At the time of the Watson family’s trip, the U.S. South was caught
up in a struggle for basic human rights that became known as the
Civil Rights Movement. Although the Declaration of Independence
states that all men are created equal and the Constitution had been
amended after the Civil War to extend the rights and protections of
citizenship to African Americans, changing the law of the land did not
always change the way people behaved. In the Northern, Eastern
and Western states, African Americans often faced discrimination, but
it was not as extreme and pervasive as in the South. Communities and
states passed laws that allowed discrimination in schooling, housing
and job opportunities, prohibited interracial marriages, and enforced segregation by creating separate facilities for
African Americans and whites.
In most of the South, African Americans were not permitted to attend the same schools as whites or to use the same
parks, playgrounds, swimming pools, hospitals, drinking fountains or bathrooms. Hotels, restaurants, and stores
would not serve African Americans. The worst sections of public facilities were set aside for “Coloreds Only.” White
children often attended large, well-equipped, modern schools while African American students went to one-room
schoolhouses without enough books or teachers. Rigged laws and “tests” prevented African Americans from voting.
A number of organizations and individuals were working tirelessly to end segregation and discrimination: the
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), and
the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), as well as Thurgood Marshall, John Lewis, Ralph Abernathy,
Medgar Evers, Fannie Lou Hamer, and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Along with many other people whose names have
been forgotten, these men and women strove to change the laws through nonviolent resistance. They adopted many
of the techniques that Mohandas Gandhi had used to liberate India from British rule. Sit-ins and boycotts of stores
and public transportation applied economic pressure. Freedom Riders - African Americans and whites - took bus
trips throughout the South to test federal laws that banned segregation in interstate transportation. Black students
had enrolled in segregated schools such as Central High in Little Rock, Arkansas, and the University of Alabama.
Picketing, protest marches, and demonstrations made headlines. Civil rights workers carried out programs for voter
education and registration. The goal was to create tension and provoke confrontations that would force the federal
government to step in and enforce the laws. Often the tension exploded into gunshots, fires, and bombings directed
against the people who so bravely fought for change.
The characters and events in this novel [and play] are fictional. However,
there were many unsolved bombings in Birmingham at the time of the story,
including the one that took place at the Sixteenth Avenue Baptist Church on
September 15, 1963. Four young-teenage girls - Addie Mae Collins, Denise
McNair, Carole Roberson and Cynthia Wesley - were killed when a bomb went
off during Sunday school. Addie Mae Collins’ sister, Sarah, had to have an
eye removed, and another girl was blinded. In the unrest that followed the
bombing, two other African American children died. Sixteen-year-old Johnny
Robinson was shot to death by police, and thirteen-year-old Virgil Wade was
murdered by two white boys. Although these may be nothing more than names
to you now, you must remember that these children were just as precious to
their families as Joetta was to the Watsons or as your brothers and sisters are
to you.
What to know - before the show!
Contextual Article Continued...
Despite the danger, the Civil Rights Movement grew stronger,
gaining support all over the country. On August 28, 1963, two
hundred thousand people marched on Washington, D.C., to
pressure Congress to pass the Civil Rights Bill, and heard Martin
Luther King, Jr., deliver his unforgettable “I Have a Dream” speech.
President Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Bill on July 2,
1964, and signed the Voting Rights Act on August 6, 1965. In 1968
Congress passed the Fair Housing Act. The individuals who supported the Civil Rights Movement took
great risks to force America to change. It was a people’s movement,
inspired by the courageous acts of ordinary citizens like Rosa Parks,
the seamstress from Montgomery, Alabama, who began the first great effort of the movement - the Montgomery bus
boycott of 1955-56 - when she refused to give up her seat to a white man.
Many heroic people died in the struggle for civil rights. Many others were injured or arrested or lost their homes or
businesses. It is almost impossible to imagine the courage of the first African American children who walked into
segregated schools or the strength of the parents who permitted them to face the hatred and violence that awaited
them. They did it in the name of the movement, in the quest for freedom.
These people are the true American heroes. They are the boys and girls, the women and men who have seen that
things are wrong and have not been afraid to ask “Why can’t we change this?” They are the people who believe
that as long as one person is being treated unfairly, we all are. These are our heroes, and they still walk among us
today. One of them may be sitting next to you as you read this, or standing in the next room making your dinner, or
waiting for you to come outside and play.
One of them may be you.
Discussion Questions:
1. Many civil rights proponents did not fight back when they were arrested
or beaten by police and segregationists. Why do you think they chose not to
fight back? In what ways were the demonstrators courageous? Would you be
able to endure such punishment without retaliation in order to help others?
2. Discuss the concept of discrimination. What are civil rights? Have you ever
experienced a situation where someone’s civil rights were denied? How did
it make you feel? How was the situation resolved? What groups do you
believe have yet to realize their equal rights today? What other groups are
discriminated against?
3. What is segregation? How does segregation deny civil rights? Does racism exist today? List some ways that
people are still discriminated against today.
4. Do you think that we still need leaders like Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King, Jr. and all those who fought so bravely
in the 1960’s to help right injustices today? Can you think of examples of leaders like these that we have today?
How to grow - after the show!
Wool Pooh
In LCT’s production of The Watsons Go to Birmingham – 1963, Kenny gets
caught up in a whirlpool at Collier’s Landing. This is also the first time he meets
the Wool Pooh. Explain how the artists at LCT used the actors and the technical
elements (especially lights, sound, and props) to show and create the water and
its effects on Kenny and Byron.
Next, use your imagination and devise a new and original way to design your
own version of the Wool Pooh. How could you change and adapt technical
elements to show the underwater scene? What different types of movement
could the actors incorporate?
RSL.6.9; TH:Re7.1.5; TH :Re8.1.5.a; TH :Cr.1.1.5.b
Frozen Images Perspective Switch
The Watsons Go to Birmingham – 1963 focuses on the story of Kenny, however the story is full of dynamic
characters with their own story arc. Talk through the main plot points in the play and begin to talk about how
other characters played a part in those moments. Next, break students into groups of 3-5 and have them choose
a secondary character from the story. Have each group discuss their character’s main plot points and create three
frozen images that tell their story. Each image should include every person in the group, either as a character or
object. After giving them time to create their images, have the students title each image and practice performing
them one after another.
After groups have created and rehearsed their frozen images, have them share them out with the class. After each
story is shared, have the audience respond with what they saw and remembered from each group. Was the story
clear? Could you tell what was happening?
SL.6.1.c; SL.6.2; TH.Pr6.1.5
Character Monologue
After completing Frozen Images Perspective Switch activity, inform students that they are going to be writing a
monologue (a speech for one actor/actress) as the character their group focused on. Have students choose one
of their three frozen images to focus on and write a 10 sentence monologue from their character in that moment.
(If you elected not to do the previous activity, have a discussion with your students about some of the main points
from the story and how secondary characters participated and influenced the action of the play. Then, have
students choose a character and write a monologue from one of those moments).These monologues should give
the audience an insight into the mind of this character. What might their character be thinking or feeling? How do
they feel about what is happening in that moment? What do they think about the characters around them?
After students have written their monologues, have them simultaneously practice reading them aloud. Tell
students to think about how their body or voice might change to embody this character. Would they stand or
speak the same way they themselves do? After giving them a little bit of time to practice, allow students to
volunteer to share their monologue with the class.
WS.6.3.a; WS.6.3.b; TH:Re8.1.5.c
How to grow - after the show!
Langston Hughes’ Mother to Son Poem
In The Watsons Go to Birmingham – 1963, Kenny reads a famous Langston Hughes poem to Byron’s class. The
poem is entitled “Mother to Son.” Read the poem out loud to your class and discuss its meaning. Place your class
into small groups and have them answer the questions that follow the poem.
Mother to Son
Well, son, I’ll tell you:
Life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.
It’s had tacks in it,
And splinters,
And boards torn up,
And places with no carpet on the floor—
Bare.
But all the time
I’se been a-climbin’ on,
And reachin’ landin’s,
And turnin’ corners,
And sometimes goin’ in the dark
Where there ain’t been no light.
So, boy, don’t you turn back.
Don’t you set down on the steps.
‘Cause you finds it’s kinder hard.
Don’t you fall now—
For I’se still goin’, honey,
I’se still climbin’,
And life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.
RSL.6.4; RSL.6.5; RSL.6.6
Langston Hughes
Discussion Questions:
1. What and who is this poem about?
2. What is the poem’s theme?
3. What does the staircase represent?
4. Why do you think life has been such a struggle for mother?
5. What do you think the tacks, spliters, and torn up boards represent?
6. What does the mother want the son to do?
7. Why do you think this poem is important? Why is it trying to say about the lives of African-Americans at the time?
African-American Poets and Writers
There have been some amazing African-American who spoke out against racial injustice. Have your students work
in teams to research someone from the following list and have them give a short bio and choose a piece of writing
that best represents their work and share a small portion of it.
Langston Hughes
Phyllis Wheatley
Sonia Sanchez
Ralph Ellison
James Baldwin
Leroi Jones (aka Amiri Baraka)
Gwendolyn Brooks
Nikki Giovanni
Chester Himes
James Weldon Johnson
Paul Laurence Dunbar
Jean Toomer
James Baldwin
Maya Angelou
Zora Neal Hurston
Alice Walker
Toni Morrison
W.6.7; W.6.8
How to grow - after the show!
Bio Poems (Copy Page)
Name: ___________________________________
W.6.3.d W.6.3.e
Date: ___________
The Watsons Go to Birmingham – 1963 is focused on the characters and their relationships. Think of a character
you identified with the most and compose a bio poem for them below. Use the story to support your answers, but
use your imagination to fill in any details you don’t know. For each line, include three of the requested items.
First name:___________________________________________________________________________________
Adjectives describing the character:____________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________________________________
Relative of:___________________________________________________________________________________
Lover of: _____________________________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________________________________
Who feels: ___________________________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________________________________
Who needs: __________________________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________________________________
Who fears: ___________________________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________________________________
Who gives: ___________________________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________________________________
Who would like to see: _______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________________________________
Resident of: __________________________________________________________________________________
Last name: ___________________________________________________________________________________
On the back of this sheet, compose a bio poem for yourself. Include specific details about your family and who you
are. Hang these poems around your classroom. As you read your classmates’ poems, find common needs, fears,
and loves.
How to grow - after the show!
What to Read Next
Bud, Not Buddy by Christopher Paul Curtis
Bud is fed up with the cruel treatment he has received at
various foster homes, and after being locked up for the night
in a shed with a swarm of angry hornets, he decides to run
away. Bud’s journey, punctuated by Dickensian twists in plot
and enlivened by a host of memorable personalities, will keep
readers engrossed from first page to last.
Esperanza Rising by Pam Munoz Ryan
This robust novel set in 1930 captures a Mexican girl’s fall
from riches and her immigration to California.
Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry by Mildred D. Taylor
The story of one African American family, fighting to stay
together and strong in the face of brutal racist attacks,
illness, poverty, and betrayal in the Deep South of the 1930s.
Let the Circle Be Unbroken by Mildred D. Taylor
The year is 1935 and the young Logan family watches as their
friend is charged with murder and tried by an all-white jury.
LCT teaches in YOUR school!
Would you like to see some of these play guide activities modeled in your classroom?
Book a workshop for your class with one of LCT’s teaching artists! In our pre-show workshops, our teaching artists
will engage students in acting skills and themes from the play through drama activities. In our post-show
workshops, students will extend their play-going experience by strengthening their personal connection to the
play and deepening their understanding of the themes and characters.
Call us at 859-254-4546 x233 to book a pre or post-show workshop for your class!
To learn more about Lexington Children’s Theatre and our programming for your school visit:
www.lctonstage.org/for-educators/in-school-experiences/