Play recalls notorious circus incident in nearby Tennessee
SART play recalls notorious circus incident from 1916
Claire Amon and Michael Mattison at Southern Appalachian Repertory Theatre. / phots by Bill Sanders/Asheville Scene
from:citizen-times.com
by Tony Kiss
by Tony Kiss
Jun. 24, 2013
\MARS HILL — As circus stories go, this is a dark one. But it’s tale that has never been forgotten just across the state line in east Tennessee.
On Sept. 13, 1916, authorities in Erwin, Tenn., hung a circus elephant that had killed its handler. Murderous Mary, as she was branded, met her fate dangling from a railroad crane in an incident so grotesque that it’s difficult to imagine today. The old Clinchfield Railroad tracks were near the current stretch of Interstate 26 that runs through Erwin, on the route between Asheville and Johnson City. The elephant was buried nearby.
The tale is recalled in the new play “A Tennessee Walk,” onstage this week at Southern Appalachian Repertory Theatre in Mars Hill. Winner of SART’s annual Scriptfest competition, the story by playwright Rob Anderson is about a young African-American girl living in Erwin, who finds herself on the same path as Murderous Mary. An old woman who was a child at the time recalls the story for a writer.
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