Lee's American classic set 1930s Alabama highlights the often violent bigotry and hypocrisy that still characterize race relations in the nation, and particularly Colorado.
According to event organizers and community leaders, the goal of the production is to begin an open and honest dialog and acknowledge that there still exists a significant race problem in the city and nation.
Colorado, a state that struggles to get even one black citizen elected to the legislature and has a large and growing education and earnings gap between white and minority citizens has been rocked recently by a series of high profile police violence and killings of minorities by the mostly white police department.
This violence finally got recognition earlier this year when the beating of Michael DeHerrera, 23, and the killings of Marvin Booker, 56, and Alonzo Ashley, 29, by Denver law enforcement were caught on camera.
Unfortunately those that should see this play never will.
If only the theater company could do a private performance for the state legislature, judges, DAs, and beat cops, because the message of To Kill a Mockingbird is of systemic judicial and cultural bigotry by educated people of power, not random acts of meanness by the ignorant.
In a state where inmates are still called nigger by their white handlers, police can murder without repercussion and DAs and judges can sentence innocent people to lengthy prison terms without due process; there is little hope a play, even one as good as this one, will make a difference.
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