MILLER

Long Wharf audiences in the 2016 Contemporary American Voices Festival. “I remember when I first showed the play to people in New York they were like, ‘I just don’t buy it!’”

Killebrew, a Lila Acheson Playwriting Fellow at The Juilliard School currently moonlighting for “Longmire” on Netflix, started writing her play after her grandfather’s funeral in Gulfport five years ago. “Miller, Mississippi,” which continues through Feb. 3, is rather epic in that it examines the Miller family as it struggles through radical civil rights conflicts from the 1960s well into the 1990s.

Killebrew’s characters, composites of family, friends and the playwright’s choice observations, are performed by Charlotte Booker (Mildred Miller); Roderick Hill (Thomas Miller); Leah Karpel (Becky Miller); Jacob Perkins (John Miller); and Benja K. Thomas (Doris Stevenson/Ruby). The design team includes Kristen Robinson (scenery), Oana Botez (costumes), Amith Chandrashaker (lighting), and Daniel Kluger (sound).

Theatergoers who saw “Miller, Mississippi” in the Contemporary American Voices Festival should know that Killebrew hasn’t stopped working on her script, which The Dallas Theatre Center produced in 2017.

“It’s totally different,” said Killebrew, who has worked on her play with director Lee Sunday Evans all along. “I think my craft and skill and all that hopefully has improved. My heart and who I am as

“I think now that the current political climate is, sadly, revealing how deeply racist, sexist and bigoted it is, (this play) becomes more relevant.”

Boo Killebrew, author, “Miller, Mississippi”

a person hasn’t changed.”

“Miller, Mississippi” was the first script that literary manager Christine Scarfuto read upon arriving to work at Long Wharf three years ago. She was instantly drawn to the richness of its writing.

“I think it’s really rare to read a new play that contains the complexity, the depth, generosity and ambition of a play like ‘Miller, Mississippi.’” I think it marries the issues (of) the state with the issues of the nation and with this personal story of the family — in a way that’s in conversation with some of our greatest American playwrights. It kind of embraces this great tradition of Southern Gothic storytelling.

“It really casts a spell,” Scarfuto said.

Though the play clearly delineates good and evil, so to speak, Scarfuto suggested that the playwright truthfully depicts her characters as complicated, even if their apparently repugnant behavior suggests otherwise.

“You really see how racism and white supremacy essentially infects and haunts this family,” she said. “It poisons them.”

Just as Scarfuto delighted in Killebrew’s script, Killebrew delighted in accepting one of three spots in Long Wharf ’s Contemporary American Voices Festival. It presented a welcome opportunity to further develop her script with Evans at a leading regional theater. Returning to Long Wharf for a full production is yet another opportunity, just as welcome, to tweak as needed.

“That’s the best thing about theater: each production is a new experience,” Killebrew said. “It’s (basically) the same script, but each production has something else to say. I think theater is the only medium that’s capable of that because it’s a one-time event.

“I think that every production is totally different and there’s so much to play with, and so many drafts to write,” said Killebrew of her collaborations with Long Wharf, and of her production in Dallas in between, for that matter.

“I’m always learning something new about it,” she said. “It’s such a big play in scope, and it’s epic in its use of time. And it deals with themes and issues that are incredibly challenging and take a lot of brainpower. So I think having more than one chance at it is really great.”

The heat of racism that serves as the play’s central nervous system has only intensified since “Miller, Mississippi” began its return to Long Wharf.

“I think now that the current political climate is, sadly, revealing how deeply racist, sexist and bigoted it is, (this play) becomes more relevant,” said Killebrew, noting that Citizen Council of America and other extreme right organizations were very much a presence in her Gulfport days. “The president uses the word ‘nationalist,’ and people become emboldened to act on their fear and hatred.”

Killebrew’s passion for the subject seems as fervent now as when she first conceived “Miller, Mississippi,” though the playwright would love to see racism eradicated from our culture.

“(Racism) changes form, but never goes away,” she said. “I’ve never thought we could just walk over it and not look at it.”