SIU Carbondale: 50th Anniversary of their Staging of Treemonisha

I was delighted to receive an email from Walter Ray last week regarding my TST column on contemporary performances of Scott Joplin’s Treemonisha. He is an archivist at Southern Illinois University - Carbondale (SIU-C). Someone had sent him my earlier article and he was contacting me about the University’s 50th anniversary commemoration of their Treemonisha production. It was to be held November 16 on the campus. He kindly invited me to participate virtually and to offer an audience member’s perspective. The SIU-C staging was very important for several reasons. It was only the third time audiences had been able to see Joplin’s work. (It had been performed in Atlanta on January 28-29, 1972, and at Wolf Trap Farm on Aug 10-14, 1972, before the SIU-C performance Nov. 17-18, 1972.) Perhaps most significantly, the Midwestern Premier was produced at a Public University with an all-African American cast of students and local residents. The Carbondale staging used William Bolcom’s orchestration that had been created for the Wolf Trap performances. They were able to have Katherine Dunham as director and choreographer. She