Based on Ernest J. Gaines’ National Book Critics Group Award-winning novel, A Lesson Before Dying is defined in a little Louisiana Cajun community in the past due 1940’s. Jefferson, a young illiterate black guy, is usually falsely convicted of murder and is sentenced to death. Grant Wiggins, the plantation schoolteacher, agrees to talk with the condemned man. The disheartened Wiggins had once harbored dreams of escaping from his impoverished youth, yet he came back to his home town after university, to teach kids whose lives appeared as unpromising as Jefferson’s. Both males forge a relationship as they come to understand what it means to resist and defy one’s own fate.

An L.A. Theatre Works full-cast performance featuring:

Rick Foucheux as Paul Bonin

Keith Glover as Offer Wiggins

Jamahl Marsh as Jefferson

Linda Powell mainly because Vivian Baptiste

Jefferson A. Russell as Reverend Moses Ambrose

Jerry Whiddon seeing that Sam Guidry

Beatrice Winde while Emma Glenn

Directed by Nick Olcott. Documented at Tone of voice of America in Washington DC.