Theatre Four
9/21/2024-11/2/2024

by Lynn Riggs
directed by Raelle Myrick-Hodges

Mint Theater Company
Artistic Director: Jonathan Bank
Producing Director: Matthew McVey-Lee

with
Julia Brothers
Andrew Gombas
Traci Hovel
Lukey Klein
Richard Lear
Mariah Lee
Mike Masters
Leon Pintel
Buzz Roddy
Lindsey Steinert
Joy Avigail Sudduth

Sets: Junghyun Georgia Lee

Costumes: Emilee McVey-Lee

Lights: Isabella Gill-Gomez

Sound: Sean Hagerty

Props: Chris Fields

Dialects & Dramaturgy: Amy Stoller

Intimacy Director: Leana Gardella

Casting: Stephanie Klapper, CSA

Production Stage Manager: Jeff Meyers
Stage Managers: Arthur Atkinson & Miriam Hyfler
Illustration: Stefano Imbert
Graphics: Hey Jude Design, Inc.
Press: David Gersten & Associates

SUMP’N LIKE WINGS

“I’ll kick yer ole door down! Lemme out! Lemme out!”

SUMP’N LIKE WINGS is the story of Wille Baker, a 16-year-old girl too proud and too wild for the life she’s stuck with. Her mother runs the dining room in the hotel her uncle owns. Willie works with her, squirming under her thumb, while her sympathetic uncle issues a warning:

“You cain't keep her in a place that's got a lid on it.
She's got sump'n inside of her like wings,
and she'll beat off the cover, and she’ll go away…”

SUMP’N LIKE WINGS is a story of the lessons learned by families about freedom and limits—about love, respect, and safety. It’s a story about home and about leaving home.

SUMP’N LIKE WINGS is set in Oklahoma, a few years after the Indian and Oklahoma Territories combined to become the 46th state in the Union. Lynn Riggs was born in Oklahoma, and he owes his lasting fame to the musical named after his home state, OKLAHOMA! — based on his 1930 play GREEN GROWS THE LILACS.

Written in 1925 and published in 1928, SUMP'N LIKE WINGS has been gathering dust for almost 100-years. There was a 'One Night Only' performance on November 27, 1931, at the Detroit Playhouse. A French translation played one-night in Brussels in 1932, where it made “a profound impression,” according to the only published review it ever received.

Mint Theater Company presents the New York Premiere of Sump'n Like Wings, which remains a resonant and compelling story about love, family, and home.

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ENRICHMINT EVENT WITH JACE WEAVER

Saturday September 28 after the Matinee

Get more insight into the life & career of Lynn Riggs from Jace Weaver, the founding Director of the Institute of Native American Studies at the University of Georgia. Weaver has written about Lynn Riggs several times, including in his seminal work of Native American literary history That the People Might Live: Native American Literature and Native American Community.

Excerpt from Jace Weaver’s Forward to The Cherokee Night and Other Plays:

Silence—even taciturnity—seldom makes for great drama, but Lynn Riggs knew Oklahomans. More so than his contemporary John Steinbeck, he heard them and gave them voice. In his preface to Green Grows the Lilacs, writing of the task of a dramatist, he concluded, “And sometimes, his characters may do stirring things he could never have calculated. And sometime, if he is fortunate, he may hear from the people he has set in motion (as Shakespeare and Chekhov often heard) things to astonish him and things to make him wise.”

"THE WAY THEM MEN DONE": SEX AND GENDER IN THE PLAYS OF LYNN RIGGS

WITH JESSE MARCHESE - DRAMATURGICAL ADVISOR
Wednesday October 9 after the matinee

Lynn Riggs’ identity, as a gay Cherokee, made him particularly sensitive to issues of sexuality and presumed gender roles in Indian Territory and the early years of Oklahoma’s statehood. This discussion will explore the way in which those themes emerge in his body of work, including Sump’n Like Wings and beyond.