Content warning: this article references race-based slavery and violence.
Light streamed through a set of broad study windows on The University of Alabama’s (UA) campus. Nestled in a plush chair with my laptop open in front of me, I hovered my cursor over a curiously-titled play, Purlie Victorious: A Non-Confederate Romp through the Cotton Patch. Originally written by Ossie Davis in 1961, director Kenny Leon had reimagined the work for a major Broadway revival in 2023. With the wonders of high-quality recording and a publicly available PBS link, I could watch the show from the comfort of my college campus in 2025 without having to travel back in time or across state-lines. And yet, even with my cursor poised over the “play” button, I had a sense that, regardless of my physical location, the play would encourage me to do just that.
Written at the height of the U. S. Civil Rights Movement, during a period of segregation and elevated racial tensions, Davis didn’t shy away from the controversial topics of his time. The work’s title itself references both the Confederacy and the cotton market, setting the scene for the play’s themes of Southern racial oppression. To do so, the play follows Reverend Purlie as he proclaims a message of freedom and justice for the African American community of a small town in 1960s Georgia. Throughout the play, Davis develops a kind of allegory between the Church and the Civil Rights Movement. Reverend Purlie’s manifesto is framed as a sermon, his agenda as a mission, and his founding documents as holy texts. According to Joe Dziemianowicz, the initial 1962 Broadway run drew in influential leaders on which Purlie was likely modeled, from Eleanor Roosevelt to Martin Luther King, Jr.
After the 2020 murder of George Floyd and flourishing of the Black Lives Matter movement, director Kenny Leon found this might be the right moment for a re-imagining of Purlie Victorious as a clear affirmation that there was still work to be done. With this context in mind, I found the circumstances of my own viewing experience to be uniquely powerful. Although I watched the play two years after its return to Broadway and over sixty years since its original production, the play seemed breathtakingly timely. Even though I sat cozily in a study room on a desegregated campus in the present-day Deep South, I was excruciatingly aware that I was sitting in the same region and on the same campus where many experienced racial oppression and exclusion for decades. It was not until 2022 that remnants of racist language were removed from the Alabama state constitution, despite being overturned through amendments years prior. And on UA’s campus itself, Greek organizations (sororities and fraternities) were not officially desegregated until 2013. Even now, in 2025, racial injustice is neither distant nor dead.
Whether other playgoers felt the same emotional weight as I prior to watching the show, even the most rudimentarily informed audiences likely anticipated the difficult topics awaiting. As I watched the production, I was struck by how Leon made use of this exact predicament as a narrow window of opportunity by leading with humor and disarming charm. It was as if Leon grabbed the viewer by the hand and reminded him or her, “This is a play. These are characters. You are here for enjoyment and entertainment. Be entertained.” So much so that as I watched, I felt my preconceptions and anxieties melt away. And from this point of mutual trust, the real work began. Because with walls torn down and preconceptions dismantled, the punchy lines that Davis penned had room to sink in.
The production begins in the main room of a quaint wooden home, complete with a kitchen table and chairs. Purlie has just returned with a girl from Dothan, Alabama (a little more than a three-hour drive from my campus), named Lutiebelle, and he quickly informs his sister-in-law of his plan to purchase the local church, Big Bethel. The real problem is that the $500 inheritance he needs is in the hands of the town’s land-owning white patriarch: Ol’ Cap’n Cotchipee. Since the deed is in his deceased cousin Bee’s name, Purlie plans to deceive Ol’ Cap’n by having Lutiebelle pose as Bee. As the play begins, Purlie and Missy rush around the living area, making temperamental quips and catching up with a sense of lively bravado.
As Purlie debates with his sister-in-law Missy about whether the girl he has brought will pass for Cousin Bee, Purlie eventually cries out, “What’s the difference? White folks can’t tell one of us from another by the head.” Although the line is delivered comedically, the actors’ resulting body language and silence successfully signal to audiences that a reconsideration is in order. This juxtaposition of tempos, contrast in speed, was a stylistic choice. Throughout, certain monologues are spoken with passion, reaching a fever-pitch of speed and sound. Others are offered joltingly, with breaks for consideration. In this opening, both actors sit down quietly, marking a notable contrast to their previous dialogue which was passionate and loud. The words sink in.
What differentiates two individuals if not their heads? Purlie’s declaration seems to insinuate that what “white folks” care about is the bodies of his people, their labor, and availability for manual tasks without cost. This dehumanization, realized in the subsequent stillness of the stage, invites playgoers to reflect deeply. This same ebb and flow of conversation continues throughout the rest of the play. Davis draws audience members in—hook, line, and sinker—with fast-paced, humorous dialogue, capturing their attention, and their affections, before highlighting reform through measured, reflective lines.
This effort continues through the alluring sense of physicality that so many of the actors portray on stage. For me, Kara Young (Lutiebelle) gave the most compelling performance. At one point in the play, as Lutiebelle ecstatically recounts her feelings for Reverend Purlie, her body language speaks far louder than the scripted words. Her eyes roll back into her head, she shakes her knees together under the table, her hands wave and her fingers wiggle, and she lets out a growling voice of longing. In another moment, as Lutiebelle attempts to retell “family” history, she leans over to retrieve tips from Reverend Purlie (positioned behind her) and reaches a near back bend in the process. Bell finds a way to make even the most basic repositioning on stage engaging, hilariously walking on her heels and moving her knees in impossible positions. Other characters similarly use physicality to heighten the allure of their respective roles. The exaggerated and humorous mannerisms captured audiences’ affections in order to subvert their expectations. It’s only later that you realize she is mimicking the kinds of blackface minstrel antics that had become popular in the mid-nineteenth century, stereotyping African Americans as a caricature onstage rather than telling their real stories. It was another way of contrasting immediate humor with stark seriousness.
A key difference, too, was that I was watching a recording of a live production rather than the live thing itself, with separate direction for the screen and additional mediation. A particular choice was made to also “stage” the live audience in New York, making their reactions—largely receptive—part of the recorded aesthetic experience for those consuming it via stream. In the recorded version, the audience’s live reactions can be heard throughout the production, and most prominently in the closing scenes. Not only does the crowd audibly shudder at the shockingly barbaric and racist comments from the play’s villain, Ol’ Cap’n Cotchipee, but they also cheer on Purlie’s success. When it is finally revealed that Reverend Purlie’s has attained Big Bethel by a twist of fate, the whole crowd bursts into applause. Indeed, audience engagement was the third and final aspect of the play that most prominently stood out to me, particularly in the moments when characters break the fourth wall.
One such instance occurs in a scene between Gitlow, Purlie’s brother, and Ol’ Cap’n. During the interaction, Ol’ Cap’n puts Gitlow on a symbolic witness stand (consisting of an upside-down wooden barrel), asking him a series of cross examination questions about racial integration. Somewhat surprisingly, Gitlow answers affirm all of Ol’ Cap’n racist beliefs, but his behavior becomes clearer when he notes aloud that Ol’ Cap’n is his boss. Indeed, his true feelings become more transparent when Gitlow mouths a simple “me too” to the audience after Ol’ Cap’n says he can’t wait for the day Gitlow will sing a spiritual over his grave. This moment of direct connection to the audience serves as a break in Gitlow’s front—a break in the character that his character is playing. In seconds, I felt the realization wash over me: Gitlow’s charisma is a survival mechanism. He employs his ability to fake affection in order to maintain his safety and status. It is a testament both to the actor’s skill and the director’s thoughtfulness to create a moment in which we as audience members become Gitlow’s confidants, seeing beneath his disguise. There is the sense, perhaps, that we have seen Gitlow’s truest self, and in seeing it, have simultaneously realized that this level of genuineness is impossible for him in the on-stage world.
Indeed, another moment, far later and much more direct, has the same effect. The final scene of the play ends with Purlie sharing a eulogy at Ol’ Cap’n funeral. As he closes out the scene, Purlie steps to the front of the stage and speaks directly to the live audience, peering into their faces and looking pointedly into their eyes. Purlie reminds the audiences to “be loyal to yourselves, who you are: your skin, your hair, your lips, your Southern speech, your laughing kindness.” His words are passionate, his expression clear, and his posture beseeching. He pauses to look at individual audience members and his eyes glisten as a genuine smile comes to his face. He no longer speaks as merely a character, or even an actor, but as a person, speaking to a group of real people. His tone indicates an awareness that the play and its messages will not die with the closing of the curtains but instead live on in the choices of those inspired by the message of Purlie Victorious.
As the crowd burst into applause and the cast bows, I found myself pondering one final question: What was the intended takeaway? Without a doubt, the cast captured the heart of its viewers in a myriad of ways, through juxtaposed line delivery, expressive personas, and crowd engagement. But what lesson did these characters teach? There is the adroit guile of Gitlow, the saucy confidence of Missy, and the bold conviction of Purlie Victorious himself. And yet, there is a depth that goes beyond the surface-level characteristics of these roles; each individual was a character not a caricature, living with a multidimensionality, displaying different perspectives with which they approach a world unfavorable toward them. The characters’ relationships, beliefs, and actions are complex, making their representation of real people believable.
As I reflected on this, I found my attention drawn to one key scene in the play, what I might argue marks the heart of the work and the climax of the plot. It is when Purlie faces Ol’ Cap’n head-on. Actor Leslie Odom Jr., playing Purlie Victorious, stands with confidence in a role very different from that of Aaron Burr in Hamilton, which garnered him a Tony and a Grammy. As he faces his people’s oppressor from across the stage, pearls of sweat drip down his forehead: “We want our cut of the Constitution, and we want it now. And not with no teaspoon, white folks! Throw it at us with a shovel!” The theater is deafeningly silent. Cast and audience alike lean forward with intense concentration as Odom’s monologue continues on. The hard-hitting lines remind viewers that the play, although bathed in lighthearted commentary, is rich with social and cultural discourse; his words clearly carry significance beyond the stage. The ferocity of his stare produces a revelation for the onlooking audience: in this moment, Odom is locking eyes with the entirety of white Southern oppression. Justice has been far too long in coming. There is no longer any time for niceties.
How easy it is to recognize the humanity in characters on a stage. How heartbreaking that for far over sixty years, the American people have been unable to do the same towards their own brothers and sisters under the flag.
The 2024 Broadway revival of Ossie Davis’s Purlie Victorious: A Non-Confederate Romp through the Cotton Patch was recorded live for the PBS Great Performances series, an available for online streaming May 24, 2024, until October 3, 2025. Performed by Leslie Odom, Jr. (Purlie Victorious Judson), Kara Young (Lutiebelle Gussie Mae Jenkins), Billy Eugene Jones (Gitlow Judson), Jay O. Sanders (Ol’ Cap’n Cotchipee), Heather Alicia Simms (Missy Judson), Vanessa Bell Calloway (Idella Landy), Noah Robbins (Charlie Cotchipee), Noah Pyzik (The Deputy), and Bill Timoney (The Sherriff). Directed by Kenny Leon for the stage with additional direction by David Horn for the screen, the creative team comprised Derek McLane (scenic design), Emilio Sosa (costumes), Adam Honoré (lighting design), Peter Fitzgerald (sound design), J. Jared Janas (hair, wig, and makeup design), Thomas Schall (fight direction), and Tré Cotton (dialect and vocal coaching). Stage managed by Giselle Raphaela and Kamra A. Jacobs. Original music by Gary Geld, lyrics by Peter Udell, and additional original music by Guy Davis.