Transcript of Mark Clements on To Kill A Mockingbird

Mark Clements: A couple of years ago I reread, after a long period of time, the novel To Kill A Mockingbird. It’s one of those books that hits you like a sledgehammer, the story, in terms of what a beautifully written, elegant book it is and an important book with an important message, an important story. And it’s the sort of book you read ten years later and it’s just as powerful but you have ten years more life experience and can see why it’s still important, why it remains an important book in the American consciousness, and why it’s still being read, still selling millions of volumes, why schools read it, why its encouraged reading. It’s just this beautiful story, it was a beautiful film, beautiful book, and we hope to give it this beautiful stage adaptation here as well. And it’s going to be directed by Aaron Posner, who authored the adaptation and directed our production last year of My Name is Asher Lev. We are very excited; there are a lot of events happening around it as well. We managed to get a NEA grant for the Big Read, which basically is a program which allows a community to be reading a book, around the play that we’re doing, and there will be showings of the movie going on and we will be relating that to our production and lots of talkbacks and events and educational activities and things happening around the story as well.