Florida Studio Theatre aims to provoke with world premiere comedy

In Northeastern Pennsylvania in the 1950s, a small town decided to change its name to honor Native American Olympic hero Jim Thorpe.

Future playwright Bruce Graham was in college when he discovered that Thorpe had no real ties to the town, which eventually obtained the athlete’s remains and erected a monument to him to create something of a tourist attraction.

Graham later got to thinking about how a town might rebrand itself, and why, which led him to the world premiere of his latest work “Visit Joe Whitefeather (and bring the family).” It begins performances on April 5 at Florida Studio Theatre, which commissioned the script.

Arts Newsletter: Sign up to receive the latest news on the Sarasota area arts scene every Monday

Concerts, festivals, arts and more: 100-plus fun things to do in April in Sarasota, Manatee and Charlotte counties

A long-delayed debut: Florida Studio Theatre gets third chance to stage world premiere play ‘Paralyzed’

“The real story is that Jim Thorpe had visited near Carlyle and people got all excited about building this memorial about two miles outside of town. For a while it was a huge tourist thing,” he said in a recent interview with director Kate Alexander.

It’s still a popular tourist destination, and Graham recalls spending summer whitewater rafting there.

Saving a struggling town

“Visit Joe Whitefeather” begins in 2018 as a woman named Lucy is making a documentary about how the town she grew up in was renamed, leading to flashbacks to 1974, when the decisions were made.

“This is during the height of Watergate, and this was a small-town Watergate,” Graham said. “One little thing building to another little thing and normally incorruptible people becoming corrupt.”

Joe Whitefeather is a fictionalized version of Jim Thorpe, a legendary athlete, a war hero and a Native American who was totally forgotten after World War II. The town is “going downhill, and like all small towns, they have to hatch a plan to save it and someone comes up with this greatest scheme,” Alexander said. “That scheme involves everybody, incrementally, having to bend.”

When he announced the play last fall, Producing Artistic Director Richard Hopkins said Graham uses a positive and comedic way to address “the missteps us white folks can take as it relates to people of color and indigenous people. The play will probably offend some of the people on the right and the left because it does push from both sides.”

Graham said his plays tend to “get both sides angry. I don’t like plays where I’m preached at. Maybe I’m the last of the moderates.”

But Alexander said it’s not a political play. “Greed affects everybody, how we incrementally sell our soul in tiny chips.” She compared the play to the work of Moliere. “It’s human nature. It’s the joy of looking at our foibles. It isn’t hitting you on the head. He does it with a deft touch.”

The cast features several returning actors, including Sarasota’s Kim Crow, who was been in eight FST productions; Britt Michael Gordon and Kraig Swartz, who were both in “The Legend of Georgia McBride”; and Anat Cogan, who was in “Handle with Care” in 2020. London Carlisle and Malka Wallick make their FST debuts and Ellie Mooney is an FST associate artist.

FST commissioned the play as part of its Playwright’s Project, which was started during the pandemic to provide opportunities for more than 30 writers and playwrights.

The theater put together several readings to help Graham develop the play and he said a presentation at last year’s new play festival “taught me a lot. It told me where I was getting on my soap box. I hate that in other people’s plays. When you’re doing a comedy, you need that audience to tell you what’s funny and what’s not.”

‘Visit Joe Whitefeather (and bring the family!)’

By Bruce Graham. Directed by Kate Alexander. Presented by Florida Studio Theatre April 5-May 21 in the Gompertz Theatre, 1265 First St., Sarasota. Tickets are $25-$39. 941-366-9000; floridastudiotheatre.org

Follow Jay Handelman on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. Contact him at jay.handelman@heraldtribune.com. And please support local journalism by subscribing to the Herald-Tribune.

This article originally appeared on Sarasota Herald-Tribune: A struggling town reinvents itself to survive in FST world premiere