"Dangerous Days" at the Colony Theater explores Arthur McDuffie's death
MIAMI - A dark time in Miami history sets the stage for "Dangerous Days," a riveting new play now on at the Colony Theater in Miami Beach.
The compelling production by Miami New Drama follows the Pulitzer Prize-winning investigation by Miami Herald reporter Edna Buchanan in 1980.
She uncovered the police cover-up surrounding Arthur McDuffie's death, which was originally reported as an accident.
Buchanan's investigation revealed a shocking truth: McDuffie's death was a homicide disguised as a traffic accident.
An all-White male jury later acquitted the four officers accused of beating McDuffie to death and the verdict sparked three days of riots in Miami.
Nicholas Griffin wrote the play, based on his bestselling book.
"So, really, it's sort of almost an old-fashioned journalist-slash-detective story, about really trying to get true justice, for what was really a perversion of justice at the time," said Nicolas Griffin.
The theater company's artistic director Michel Hausman read the book and immediately knew he needed Griffin to turn it into a play.
"Nic said I'm not a playwright and I'm very excited to prove him wrong in front of the entire community because he wrote a play that's outstanding, it supports itself on the extraordinary detailed investigation that he spent years making. It's really a look at our community, a look at the past of our community," said Michel Hausmann.
Jen Wineman directs it.
"My most important job is to take the information of the story and help the playwright to shape it into something that's really theatrical and exciting to sit in an audience and watch for 95 minutes," Wineman said.
"So we get the humor, we get the sadness, we get the anger, we get all of the emotions that are involved in this story and not just the heaviness."
Miami's own Roderick Randle was just 10 years old when it happened. He plays Arthur McDuffie. Randle knew he had to do it as soon as he read the play.
"It was easy to say yes to doing the show because of what it means to Miami, what it means to me, what it means to the cultural entity that we have down here in South Florida," said Randle.
Actress Caitlin Clouthier plays Edna Buchanan who now, at age 85, suffers from dementia.
"I think the biggest thing that I love in addition to her relentless capabilities is that her biggest focus was on the victims," Clouthier explained.
"She wanted to focus on who did this happen to and how did it affect the whole community and that inspires me a lot."
All involved in this production say Buchanan is the true hero of this story.
"There was a morality to her stories, even when they were just a column long. She could always find sort of beginning, middle and end and sort of a moral core to the stories. And I think you don't find that very often and I think that's probably the reason she ended up winning the Pulitzer Prize in the first place," Griffin said.
"This is a play that happened because there were local journalists doing local stories and because of that commitment from Edna Buchanan, she changed the face of this community, " Hausmann said.
This important play about Miami's history is on stage through April 28th at the Colony Theater.
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