Reflective ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ seeks new resonance at Umbrella

Eight years ago, when The Umbrella Arts Center last staged “To Kill a Mockingbird,” only 75 seats per performance were available due to construction. The entire 15-show run sold out before opening night.

Now, with a full main stage, a 350-seat house, and what Producing Artistic Director Brian Boruta calls “the capabilities and the audience experience that we can offer here,” the Acton theater is bringing the story back with renewed urgency — and a fresh coat of paint. 

“We often spend a lot of time in our season selection thinking about how we can meet the moment that we’re in as a society,” Boruta said. Revisiting Harper Lee’s classic felt pressing, he said, as audiences continue “wrestling with some of the same issues in our society.” 

The show opens Friday, February 27 and runs through March 22.

Reimagining a classic

Set in 1930s Alabama, “To Kill a Mockingbird” follows young Scout Finch as her father, Atticus, defends a Black man falsely accused of a crime. Though the novel was published in 1960, Boruta said its themes of racial injustice, assaults on marginalized communities, and questions about the integrity of the justice system continue to resonate today. 

“We’re still 60-some years on, wrestling with some of the same issues in our society,” he said.

Director Scott Edmiston, returning to The Umbrella after helming its production of “The Minutes,” acknowledged that revisiting a beloved work poses challenges.

“People bring a lot of feeling about the story,” Edmiston said. “The book is very dear to them, or the film is very dear to them. So I wanted to still capture the heart and the essence of what’s beloved about it, but also give it a fresh kind of 21st-century form.”

Rather than competing with the novel or film adaptation, Edmiston said he is leaning into what live theater can uniquely offer. The production highlights the recollections of Scout looking back as an adult on that childhood summer.

Characters will speak directly to the audience, and in the pivotal courtroom scene, lawyers will address theatergoers as the jury, “as if you’re the ones who are making the decision about guilty or not guilty here,” Edmiston said.

The set will be “fairly abstract and airy,” Boruta said, letting the audience imagine the world of Maycomb, Alabama, rather than presenting a literal representation. 

Live cello music

Enhancing that atmosphere, Boruta said, is an original live score composed and performed by cellist Valerie Thompson. 

“She will be seated on stage,” Edmiston said. “She has been composing and improvising original cello music that is integrated within the performance.”

He said the collaboration creates a chamber-like experience, with actors responding to the music and the music responding to the actors. 

At its core, Edmiston said, the story is about empathy.

“This is a story about three children who learn that sometimes the world is unjust and unfair and cruel,” he said. “But they also learn about kindness and the importance of a moral conscience and that we have a responsibility to stand up for others, to stand up for what we believe, even if we think we’re going to lose.”

He pointed to the children’s fear of Boo Radley, a reclusive neighbor whom they “other” and mythologize, as a parallel to broader impulses to demonize those perceived as different.

“That desire to blame,” Edmiston said, “is something that is kind of resonating with us all right now.”

For information on performance dates and times, tickets, KidCare performances, dinner-and-a-show nights, and post-show talkbacks, visit theumbrellaarts.org.