The Visual and Performing Arts program at Fort Valley State University (FVSU) will present a staged reading of a new one-act play titled Now What a Time: Fort Valley State University’s Ham and Egg Show Play (NWAT). The reading will take place on Thursday, April 18, 2024, at 6:30 p.m. in the Pettigrew Auditorium on FVSU’s campus.

The one-act play commemorates FVSU’s “Ham and Egg Show” (1916-1966). The FVSU “Ham and Egg Show” is known as the first folk culture and music festival in the United States. NWAT adapts archival materials into a historical play by narrating the Ham and Egg Show’s development as well as the event’s groundbreaking impact. The play showcases the efforts of the event’s key players, including Otis Samuel O’Neal, Margaret Toomer, Fort Valley High and Industrial School’s Second Principal Henry A. Hunt and Fort Valley State University’s First President Horace Mann Bond. The contributions of other prominent cultural producers, such as Booker T. Washington, W.C. Handy, and W.E.B. DuBois, are also foregrounded.

NWAT is the creation of Maisha S. Akbar, Ph.D., Visual and Performing Arts professor and chair of the Department of Arts and Communications. According to Akbar, the idea for the play derived from a desire to tell the university’s story.

“The play is based on my inspiration to unearth an FVSU story, especially regarding the institution’s status as Georgia’s only land grant HBCU,” Akbar said.

By representing the story of an HBCU performance tradition, NWAT performs in the same way as prominent television and film productions such as “The Great Debaters” (2007), Spike Lee’s “School Daze” (1988), NBC’s “A Different World” (1987-1993) and others.

She further stated that she hopes NWAT will garner appreciation for the university’s Ham and Egg Show as HBCU innovation, pedagogy, and industry.

NWAT stages the Ham and Egg Show as a “comm-university” production and as leadership through “bottom-up engagement,” which represents performance-based innovation at FVSU. The play is suitable for grades eight and up and effectively stages food production by middle Georgia/Black farmers and HBCU theatre history. This initiative is supported by the Strengthening Historically Black Colleges and Universities Program grant (Title III, Part B, of the U.S. Department of Education Act of 1965, as amended).

Date: Thursday, April 18, 2024

Time: 6:30 p.m. EST

Location: Pettigrew Auditorium, Fort Valley State University, 1005 State University Drive, Fort Valley, GA, 31030