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Maiesha McQueen in the IRT’s 2024 production of Fannie: The Music and Life of Fannie Lou Hamer. (Photo/Zack Rosing)

By Marilyn Odendahl

The Indiana Citizen

January 17, 2024

She was famous for saying, “I’m sick and tired of being sick and tired,” but Fannie Lou Hamer, an icon of the civil rights movement, never lost the energy to champion the power of voting.

A play about Hamer’s life and advocacy – Fannie: The Music and Life of Fannie Lou Hamer – is now being performed at the Indiana Repertory Theatre in Indianapolis. To amplify her message, the IRT has invited two voting rights groups – the Indiana League of Women Voters and HeadCount – to offer voter registration assistance and information to anyone attending the show.

Benjamin Hanna, IRT artistic director, said the theater intentionally programmed the play for the start of the 2024 election cycle. Rather than waiting until the campaigns and political messaging are going full tilt and voters are feeling overwhelmed, Hanna said, he and his team wanted to reach out early so voters could be inspired by Hamer’s words, instead of thinking their votes do not matter.

“So we’re really excited because Fannie was such an incredible activist and she used everything she had to encourage people to vote,” Hanna said. “She made meals for people, she sang for people, she would go to their homes, she’d go to their churches. And that kind of work is the work of all of us, as citizens, to find our friends and family to get them out to vote.”

For HeadCount, collaborating with a live performance to promote voter registration is part of its DNA. The national nonpartisan, nonprofit’s mission includes having volunteers at concerts, festivals and community events who will engage and inform young music fans about civic participation and voting.

A theater audience is not HeadCount’s typical target but, Kelly Klevitsky, Indianapolis team leader for the organization, said she has been contacting sporting leagues and community groups to reach a broader demographic beyond the rock concert-going crowd. Being at the IRT seemed like a good fit, since the play emphasizes the power of voting.

“(We’re) just making sure that our resources aren’t just hitting the same people over and over,” Klevitsky said, adding that she wants to reach people who may not know how to find election information and to encourage people to vote – not only in the general elections for state and national offices but also in the primaries and elections for local offices. “We’re just trying to diversify who can have access to our resources if they won’t be showing up at our usual type of events,” she said.

Voting rights for all

The play’s spirit and story spills off the stage and into the lobby, which is decorated with replicas of the voting signs and protest placards that Hamer would have used. Hanna said the intent is to give patrons the feeling that they are at a voting convention or community action meeting when they enter the theater.

Portrayed by Maiesha McQueen, Hamer tells her story on stage, starting from when she picked cotton as a sharecropper’s daughter in Mississippi to her surprise at the age of 44, when she first learned she could cast a ballot, to the police brutality she endured just trying to register to vote. Interwoven into the performance, Hanna said, is the chance for the audience to participate, as Hamer calls attention to the rights that Americans enjoy and invites everyone to join in singing the songs that are special to her journey.

While the play encourages civic engagement, Hanna said, just going to the theater is a civic act. Live theater patrons can gain a better understanding of their neighbors and their communities by being exposed to a play’s perspectives and experiences that may be different from their own, he said.

“I do think that many of these plays change hearts and minds and create civic action, just from witnessing the play and the conversations you have with your family or friends or your folks at church that you engage with,” Hanna said.

Between HeadCount and the League of Women Voters, volunteers are scheduled to be available to help register voters during 10 performances of Fannie. Barbara Tully, an LWV volunteer, said she is not expecting to be very busy, since many who attend the theater likely already vote in elections.

Still, Tully plans to talk to as many patrons as she can, asking them if they are registered to vote at their current address, rather than waiting for them to make an inquiry. Those conversations, she said, might have a ripple effect as the people pass along the message of registration to their relatives, friends and coworkers.

Also, Tully said, supporting Fannie might help the League of Women Voters receive some redemption from its past. She noted that when the League was founded more than 100 years ago, it did not welcome women of color like Hamer.

“It doesn’t make up for the not-so-pretty history of the beginning of the league,” Tully said of registering voters at the IRT play, “but, I think, it hopefully begins to build bridges and people can see the league really is about voting rights for all.”

Hanna believes if Hamer were alive today, she would be telling everyone that they have a responsibility to remind other citizens to not take the right to vote for granted. He hopes that message creates a feeling of optimism and energy that stays with the patrons long after they see the play.

“I hope,” Hanna said, “that people walk out thinking, ‘What can I do to be more like Fannie Lou? How can she inspire me to take action?’”

If you go

The Indiana Repertory Theatre will be performing Fannie through Feb. 4. For more information, visit irtlive.com.

Dwight Adams, a freelance editor and writer based in Indianapolis, edited this article. He is a former content editor, copy editor and digital producer at The Indianapolis Star and IndyStar.com, and worked as a planner for other newspapers, including the Louisville Courier Journal.