Flashback..rRevelations. sequence "strange fruit"

I got a call from a guy who had a part in a play I had written in the 1990s called "revelations of the african american experience" which made me look for the old scripts and things. Such a flashback.
I never tire of laughing at the irony that youth is full of ignorance.
When we first did the play it had a lot of flashback sequences sort of like the early DeMille silents witha Nita Naldi, Gloria Swanson and people of the early cinema era.
In his movies he usually went back to biblical times or the roman empire. Well, since at that time he was my inspiration (imagine being inspired by someone from your great grndmothers era?) yet I was.
L flashed back to the harlem jazz era wrote a few original blues.
The thing about that play that has made me smile years later we did a "strange fruit" sequence.
I remember sadiq and some other guys built this prop of this humungous poplar tree (or what they envisioned a damn poplar tree looked like) and hung a carricature of a negro body hanging. The singer was a guy named dee his rea name was Ray but everyone called him Dee. He had a great gospelesque voice but somehow I was able to get him to. Tone down and sing starnge fruit basically the way it was meant to be presented. Meaningfully with emotion and no vocal tricks, slides and runs.
Their was only one black lady in the audience she was a GED teacher the rest were white.
When that sequence hit the theater or rather gym went black except for one pinlight on that tree and the cast one by one like mourners at an old southern funeral march came in crying and moaning towards the tree. The narrator read about what strange fruit means today. How african americans men are being lynched by ignorance, violence, black on black crime aids and drugs. the band played the unduly long intro that strange fruit is famous for and then Dee sang. As I reminise a tear comes to my eye Dee sang that song note for note with such emotion that the whole gym was so quiet. They were opened mouth.
I have never put on another play since then. I wondered how I could ever out do that? They got it. Every white person in that audience dug what bag I was coming out of.
That's a good feeling