By Bob Schwarz, WV Gazette Staff writer
Ricklin Brown will again play Atticus and Patty Rosebourgh will again play Calpurnia when the Kanawha Players open “To Kill a Mockingbird” at 8 p.m. Friday for a two-weekend run at the Civic Center’s Little Theater.
Brown and Rosebourgh performed these roles together in a 1997 Charleston Stage Company staging. “I love the part and love the play,” said Brown. “To Kill a Mockingbird” is the reason I became a lawyer.”
Every person accused of a crime deserves representation, Brown said. Lawyers are supposed to represent, and juries are to render verdicts.
Brown plays the respected small-town Alabama lawyer who agrees to defend a black man whom, he believes, has been falsely accused of raping a 19-year-old white woman from the town’s least respected white family.
It is 1935 in the segregated South. Atticus is a widower with two children, Scout, age 9, and her older brother, Jem. The townspeople are displeased with Atticus for defending a black man accused of a heinous crime. Atticus knows he can’t win the case even if the jury thinks the accuser is lying, but he explains to Scout why he is taking the case anyway.
Rosebourgh plays Calpurnia, the black woman who helps Atticus raise the two children. “I really believe the story is timeless, because of the emphasis on individuals who are not tolerant of others ... and on individuals who are caring regardless,” Rosebourgh said.
Atticus tells his children that to understand people, they will have to walk in those people’s shoes. “That’s at the core,” Rosebourgh said. “Suddenly the children have to think beyond themselves. They have to place themselves in someone else’s shoes to appreciate the suffering and wrongs, and even the good in other people.”
The drama lacks some complexities that the Pulitzer Prize-winning Harper Lee novel had. In the novel, for instance, Calpurnia had children. “The book depicts the African-American woman, who frequently had to leave her own children to help raise someone else’s,” Rosebourgh said.
The novel has been a persistent favorite as required reading for high school and college classes, and the play a consistent audience favorite. “It’s a matter of conscience,” Rosebourgh said. “There comes a time in everybody’s life when your conscience has to lead you.”
Lily Odekirk, a 10-year-old fourth-grader making her 10th appearance on stage and fourth with Kanawha Players, plays Scout. Her older brother Conner Odekirk, 13, plays Jem. Debbie Rainey Haught, who acted in the 1997 production, directs.
Ricklin Brown is a partner in the Charleston office and concentrates his practice in labor and employment law. He serves as Chairman of the Labor and Employment Practice Group.