‘Flies At The Well’ To Be Staged In Michigan (at the Fourth Wall)

Friday, January 30, 2015  (Article by by W. WINSTON SKINNER in the Times Herald)

“Flies at the Well,” Jeff Bishop’s play about the 1948 John Wallace murder case, is to be staged in April in Michigan.

Joan Doggrell of the Newnan Theatre Company said “a trial production” of the play is scheduled for April 18 in Jackson, Mich. In 1948, Wallace, a prominent Meriwether County farmer, was tried and convicted of murdering William Turner, who worked for him.

The Michigan production is sponsored by Gary and Marji Minix, Doggrell said.

A reading of the play was staged for an invited group of Coweta citizens at the Wadsworth Auditorium on Nov. 9. The next goal was an out-of-town staging.

Bishop, a former Times-Herald writer who now directs the museums of the Newnan-Coweta Historical Society, “needs to make sure that the play works for an audience outside of Georgia that is unfamiliar with the story,” Doggrell said.

The real life events had lots of twists. William Turner was using the name “Wilson Turner” because his brother, Wilson, was exempted from the military draft. In the Jim Crow era, two black farm workers testified Wallace forced them to help him burn Turner’s body.

Georgia law required human remains for a murder trial, and Turner’s “corpus delecti” consisted of a few shards of bone held in a matchbox. One of the witnesses in the case was Mayhayley Lancaster, an eccentric Heard County fortuneteller who knew both Turner and Wallace.

“Here in Coweta County, the tale is legendary,” Doggrell said – noting some older Cowetans “actually recall the 1948 murder.

”Following the Nov. 9 reading, Bishop “has revised his script and is now ready for a more complete staging,” Doggrell said.

There has been an interest in a play based on the Wallace murder case for years. It has been suggested numerous times that staging the play in the upper floor courtroom of the Coweta County Courthouse – where Wallace’s case actually took place – could be a tourism draw. Parallels have often been drawn to the yearly productions of “To Kill a Mockingbird” in Harper Lee’s hometown in Alabama.

In 2011, a “Citizens’ Posse” headed by Caroline Abbey, then chairman of the NTC board, sent out a proposal inviting authors nationwide to write a new play. “With grants from donors such as the Coweta Community Foundation and the Charter Foundation, the plan forged ahead, and Jeff Bishop was chosen to write the play,” Doggrell said.

“Flies at the Well” emerged from Bishop’s “extensive research in newspaper archives and historical documents.” NTC accepted the play in December 2011.

Once Bishop and NTC are ready, “Flies at the Well” will be staged in Newnan, Doggrell said.