Quinton Cockrell
Historic Barter Theatre announces the world premiere of “Trains” the gripping new play that examines how the past lingers beneath the surface of everyday life. Running from Feb. 13-28 at Barter’s Smith Theatre, Abingdon, Virginia, this powerful new work marks the first production fully developed through Barter’s Black Stories Black Voices Initiative.
Quinton Cockrell is the playwright who created “Trains,” the first play to begin as a monologue in Barter Theatre’s Black Stories/Black Voice, expand into a scene and become a full-length play.
“Barter provided writing prompts, mostly based on historical incidents involving African Americans in the Appalachian region. One of the prompts was about the expulsion of 200 black people from the town of Corbin, Kentucky.
“I was working on a piece about racially motivated violence for another theater at the time. That piece was basically just about the unfortunate events. I became fascinated with the idea of exploring the motivations, implications and lasting trauma of such incidents. The Corbin story gave me a great opportunity to examine the repercussions,” Cockrell says.
The event occurred in 1919. Two men robbed another man, who said that the attackers were two black men. Unable to identify which men it was, a white mob went house to house and rounded up black residents. They then forced the group of approximately 200 men, women and children to the station and herded them onto railcars which were headed to Knoxville, Tennessee.
“We do not have a lot of real information about the details of the expulsion. We know what led to it, when it happened, and that the town of Corbin is still widely known for that one night. ‘Trains’ focuses on individuals affected by it. The characters, their relationships and given circumstances are all created,” he says.
In the play, it’s 13 years later and Travis Hampton and his father, Lester, live in Knoxville and are still dealing with the memories of that night. That balance is tested when Travis’ former friend, a white man named Junior Greevy, arrives with a business proposition, forcing buried memories and unresolved tensions back into the open. As old relationships collide with long-held fears, “Trains” explores what happens when the past comes knocking at the door.
“In order to create the monologue, I had to create the whole world of a play and the characters who lived there. Left on my own, I may have gotten around to expanding the piece. I may not have. Barter asked me to expand the monologue into a scene for presentation at their Shine event. After the scene was read at Shine, they asked me if I was interested in writing a whole play. By that point, I was dying to tackle it.
“Black Stories/ Black Voices is an important step for Barter, and I think many other theaters would benefit from trying something similar. There are so many untold stories and so many undiscovered talented writers,” Cockrell says.
“Trains” isn’t his first play. His first was a one-person show, “Shot House.” Other plays are “Chaos is Come Again,” a play about an actor coaching a music mogul to play Othello on Broadway; “Memorial,” an episodic play depicting the incidents of lynching in an Alabama county; “The Calling,” a play about Civil Rights icon U. W. Clemon; and “City Limits,” the first play selected as part of the Black in Appalachian initiative (Black Stories/Black Voices’ original name).
“I started writing plays in the early 2000s because I was no longer in New York, and I needed a creative outlet. I was also tired of the acting roles I was getting. My first short plays were written for me to act in. When I started writing plays in which there were no parts for me, I knew I had crossed over into being a playwright.
“Acting is my first love and what I was trained to do. I started directing because I began teaching at the university level and being in the directing rotation is part of the job. I have grown to love it, even more so since I am teaching it. Currently, I consider myself a playwright. I write because I have to. I am working on three separate plays now,” he says.
Cockrell is a native of Birmingham, Alabama. He is a graduate of Birmingham-Southern College and The Alabama Shakespeare Festival’s Professional Actor Training Program. Cockrell has worked with numerous theaters throughout the United States, including Riverside Shakespeare Company, Westbeth Theatre, Soho Rep, The John Houseman Theatre, Playwright’s Horizons, Orlando Shakespeare Theatre, Studio Arena Theatre, Heritage Repertory Company, Birmingham Children’s Theatre, City Equity Theatre, Barter Theatre and Red Mountain Theatre Company. He is a recipient of the Alabama State Council on the Arts Fellowship in playwriting for his plays “Low Life” and “Shot House” (which premiered in Paris at L’Ogresse Theatre in July 2007).
His writing has been selected as a finalist in Oregon Shakespeare’s Ashland New Play Festival, The O’Neill Center’s National Music Theater Conference, The South Eastern Theatre Conference Charles M. Getchell Prize and The Risk Theatre Modern Tragedy contest. His play “City Limits” won Barter Theatre’s Black in Appalachia Initiative.
He was commissioned by The Red Mountain Theatre Company to write “Memorial,” a play about historic racial violence, and “The Calling” which explores the life of civil rights icon U. W. Clemon.
He is a professor of performance at Troy University, Troy, Alabama. He is a nine-time recipient of the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival Meritorious Achievement Award for Excellence in Directing. He is a member of Actor’s Equity Association and The Dramatists Guild of America.
