“To Kill A Mockingbird”: Changes Are Coming
When the curtain rises on the world premiere of Aaron Sorkin’s theatrical version of Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, coming to Broadway in December 2018, audiences won’t encounter the morally sound Atticus Finch they know. “He becomes Atticus Finch by the end of the play,†Sorkin told Vulture. “And while he’s going along, he has a kind of running argument with Calpurnia, the housekeeper, which is a much bigger role in the play I just wrote. He is in denial about his neighbors
and his friends and the world around him, that it is as racist as it is, that a Maycomb County jury could possibly put Tom Robinson in jail when it’s so obvious what happened here. He becomes an apologist for these people.†Atticus’ journey, Sorkin says, will have deeper resonance in the wake of the August attack in Charlottesville, Virginia, in which a car plowed through a crowd of peaceful protesters who were demonstrating against an-alt right white nationalist rally. One woman was killed in the tragedy.
“All of a sudden, Donald Trump stood up at a news conference and said there are good people on both sides. I went, ‘Wow, bingo. We hit it right in the middle,’†Sorkin said.
