John Ball's In The Heat of the Night
by Matt Pelfrey, John Ball
Highlights
Synopsis
It’s 1962. A hot August night lies heavy over the small town of Argo, Alabama.
A dead white man is discovered, and the local police arrest a Black stranger named Virgil Tibbs, who turns out to be a homicide detective from California.
Tibbs soon becomes the racially tense community’s single hope in solving a brutal murder that has yielded no witnesses, no motives and no clues.
Acclaimed playwright Matt Pelfrey’s adaptation of John Ball’s In the Heat of the Night is based on the award-winning book, which inspired an Oscar-winning film and Emmy-winning television series.
Press Reviews
"Eminently stageworthy... a tense and exciting story that follows the book's basic plot but offers viewers a distinctly new and different In the Heat of the Night."
— CurtainUp
"The play is taut and startlingly resonant, even as it deals with events taking place nearly 50 years ago. Pelfrey's work is economical and uncompromising... suspenseful, thrilling and stunningly theatrical."
— NYTheatre.com
Characters
| Character |
|---|
ACTOR #1 Chief Gillespie |
ACTOR #2 Virgil Tibbs |
ACTOR #3 Sam Wood |
ACTOR #4 Pete/Man In Shadows/Klansman 1 |
ACTOR #5 Harvey Oberst/Purdy/Klansman |
ACTOR #6 Charles Tatum/Endicott/Al Jennings |
ACTOR #7 Coroner/Mayor Schubert/Klansman |
ACTOR #8 Eric Kaufman/Ralph/Klansman |
ACTOR #9 Melanie Tatum |
ACTOR #10 Noreen Purdy |
Publication
John Ball's In The Heat of the Night is a play written by Matt Pelfrey and published by Samuel French (2011).
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Buy Play
Paperback
Samuel French · 2011 · 101 pp
Performance Rights
Restrictions: Major Markets Plus (US) / Standard Plus Add'l Postcodes (UK)
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