Thurnell alston biography of christopher

`Praying for Sheetrock,” at Lifeline Theatre, begins with an act of violence by a white police officer against a black man in a small town in Georgia in the s.

After that incident, however, this tale of a struggle for justice takes a complex and provocative turn that sets it apart from most dramas of the civil rights movement.

The story was first told in in a prize-winning book by Melissa Fay Greene, a former VISTA volunteer in the Georgia Legal Services Program, and it is now being retold in a skillful and stirring stage presentation by adaptor-director Meryl Friedman.

Friedman’s method is to use the many people of McIntosh County to unfold the drama of one man, Thurnell Alston, who became the first black elected county commissioner in his area’s history.

The first half of the play, set in scenic designer Alan Donahue’s small-town montage and punctuated with traditional hymns and songs, relates Alston’s slow, determined, eventually successful drive