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Smoldering Fires

"Oh, be fiery. By all means be fiery. Fiery in your words, your nonviolent actions. Fiery in the way you learn and grow. Stay on fire with determination and the drive for change."
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

  • Full Length Play
  • Drama
  • 70 minutes

  • Target Audience: Pre-Teen (Age 11 - 13), Teen (Age 14 - 18), Appropriate for all audiences
  • Set Requirements: Unit Set/Multiple Settings

  • Performance Group:
  • Community Theatre, College Theatre / Student, High School/Secondary
Dashaun Johnston and Corey Tyler are 12-year-old black boys who seem unlikely friends: Dashaun can barely make it through the school day without getting into trouble, while Corey excels. But the two have a special bond, and together they share a dream of cleaning up their sometimes violent, drug-infested urban neighborhood.

At the top of the play, Corey has just presented an oral report on a book about young activists who fought during the civil rights movement. He believes that he and Dashaun can enable change, just as those kids had decades agoethat their dream, in fact, can become reality. Dashaun, however, is less certain, drawn more as he is to the streets and the promise of quick cash if he joins a drug dealer's crew. But when tragedy strikes Corey and his family, Dashaun is riddled with guilt, anger, frustration and the dangerous desire for revenge. Then one night Corey comes to Dashaun in a heightened dream and takes him on a historical journey involving Martin Luther King Jr. and the civil rights movement. And from that journey Dashaun returns transformed, determined now to turn his neighborhood -- and his life -- around, particularly in the name of Corey, his one true friend. 

REVIEWS:

"A beautiful, moving, relevant piece."

 Greater Milwaukee Today

"This amazing drama applies the ideals and struggles of the civil rights movement to contemporary city life, reminding the audience of the horrific fires of hatred and prejudice in the past and the smoking embers that still burn."

 Journal Sentinel

  • Casting: 12M, 6F
  • Casting Attributes: Reduced casting (Doubling Possible)

Name Price
Smoldering Fires Script Order Now

Dashaun Johnston and Corey Tyler are 12-year-old black boys who seem unlikely friends: Dashaun can barely make it through the school day without getting into trouble, while Corey excels. But the two have a special bond, and together they share a dream of cleaning up their sometimes violent, drug-infested urban neighborhood. At the top of the play, Corey has just presented an oral report on a book about young activists who fought during the civil rights movement. He believes that he and Dashaun can enable change, just as those kids had decades agoethat their dream, in fact, can become reality. Dashaun, however, is less certain, drawn more as he is to the streets and the promise of quick cash if he joins a drug dealer's crew. But when tragedy strikes Corey and his family, Dashaun is riddled with guilt, anger, frustration and the dangerous desire for revenge. Then one night Corey comes to Dashaun in a heightened dream and takes him on a historical journey involving Martin Luther King Jr. and the civil rights movement. And from that journey Dashaun returns transformed, determined now to turn his neighborhoodeand his lifeearound, particularly in the name of Corey, his one true friend. Commissioned by First Stage Children's Theater, Milwaukee. Unit set. Approximate running time: 70 minutes.

$19.95