Anne Thompson-Scretching’s A LESSON IN BLOOD is the first play in her trilogy THE BLOOD TRILOGY, which also includes her works A LONG WAY FROM HOME and HOME IS SWEET SORROW.   A LESSON IN BLOOD premiered at the ATA and won Best Play, 2011 Jean Dalrymple Awards.

Setting: The living room of an old house in the rural south

Place & Time: Early fall Georgia, during the Jim Crow era 1940’s

CAST: Rommell Sermons, Natasha Sahs, Serena Profaci, David Ezell, Joy Foster, Alan Hasnas, Kevin Leonard, Ronan Schwarz     

SYNOPSIS:

Aggie is the daughter of Nathan, a card carrying Klansman. She has returned to the south after a seven year absence because she is dying. Unbeknownst to her family, she has given birth to a child. The father is a colored Cherokee Indian who lives with his Aunt Lucy and his brother Calvin, whose upbringing is obscured in African superstition and Georgia roots. Aggie only reveals the secret to Osceola, that he’s the child’s father. All hell breaks loose when Clara, the woman Osceola is seeing threatens to tell “the law” when she finds out the two were lovers. The law is a childhood friend, Johnny Ray the Sheriff, who is also a Klansman and a racist. When Aggie is murdered, the Sheriff gets Osceola fired from his job at Noah Cohen office who is a Jewish lawyer that befriends this colored family. The mystery is who killed Aggie, was it Clara or was it the Sheriff who loved her.

March 2025