New One-Act Play by Ifa Bayeza Chronicles the Life of the Tale-telling Trumpeter
The American playwright Ifa Bayeza—author of The Ballad of Emmett Till, which won the 2009 Edgar Award for Best Play—last year shifted her focus from true crime to trad jazz.
Her newest play, Bunk Johnson - Out of the Shadows: A Blues Poem was performed November 10, 2018, at The Shadows, in Johnson’s hometown of New Iberia, Louisiana.
Located in New Iberia’s Main Street District and set among towering live oak trees draped with Spanish moss on the banks of Bayou Teche, The Shadows is a Classic Revival-style home with a Louisiana Colonial floor plan built in 1834.
Bayeza had been hired to write the script after The Shadows received a grant from the African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund of the National Trust for Historic Preservation.
Pat Kahle, director of The Shadows, said the play was inspired by archived recordings of William Weeks Hall talking about the music of Bunk Johnson, whom he admired. From the mid-1920s until his death in 1958, Hall lived in The Shadows on the Teche which he meticulously restored to its 19th century glory.
Bayeza described her new play as a musical showcasing tunes from Bunk Johnson’s repertoire of classic jazz going back to the turn of the 20th century, with a few new compositions added.
Early in her research, Bayeza studied 1,500 letters
