‘Love Has to Win’
Lynzi Smith, 10, who portrays Melody Ellison, a young black girl growing up in 1964 during the Civil Rights Era, argues with her parents about going to school in a scene from “Love Has to Win” during a rehearsal at LeMoyne Community Center in Washington.
Linda Harris, director of education at LeMoyne Community Center in East Washington, encourages Lynzi Smith, left, who portrays Melody Ellison in “Love Has to Win,” and K’Nisha Brown, who plays Frank “Papa” Ellison, to show some more attitude during a rehearsal at the center.
Lynzi Smith, as Melody, refuses to say the Pledge of Allegiance with her classmates in “Love Has to Win.”
Mackenzie Burch, who portrays Miss Abbott in “Love Has to Win,” reprimands Lynzi Smith, who plays Melody Ellison, for not saying the Pledge of Allegiance.
Even though there was no theater kit to accompany the latest book in Linda Harris’ American Girl collection, that didn’t stop her from forging ahead to create a poignant play with a powerful message.
And on Thursday, members of the American Girl Book Club at LeMoyne Community Center in East Washington will perform the dramatic production.
“Love Has to Win” is the story of Melody Ellison, a 9-year-old black girl who is growing up in Detroit, Mich., in 1964 during the Civil Rights Era, when much of the country was divided in terms of racial equality.
Melody, played by headstrong 10-year-old Lynzi Smith, faces many challenges, and she wants to be a voice of change, so she’s ready to be brave – and heard.
At the end of the performance, the girls will treat the audience to a Motown revue.
This will be the seventh dinner-theater performed by the American Girl Book Club, launched in 2010 by Harris, not long after she picked up a copy of her first American Girl book, “Meet Addy,” when her flight was delayed at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport. The book was about a fugitive slave who escapes with her mother to Philadelphia during the Civil War.
Harris had just started reading the book when she realized that it combined two of her favorite pastimes: history and reading.
“I’m an amateur history buff, and I love to read. It’s right up my alley,” Harris said.
And, she wanted to share both of her passions with the girls who were enrolled in the after-school program at LeMoyne Community Center.
With the blessing of Joyce Ellis, director of the center, Harris started the club with nine girls. This year, 25 girls, ages 8 to 14, are members of the club.
“I’m just really enthusiastic about it,” said Harris, who is the center’s director of education. “There are too many kids I know who don’t like to read.”
Each American Girl book series, which explores the era in which the character was raised, usually is accompanied by a theater kit. But Melody was just released in late 2016, and there was no theater material available.
“Six of the original dolls had the play,” Harris said. “I was lucky I found a movie on Amazon,” which she adapted to Melody.
Thursday’s production also will help fund the girls’ trip to Detroit – Melody’s hometown – in August. Harris has been matching trips with the featured doll since 2011, and the dinner-theater serves as a fundraiser for their adventure.
The girls visited Colonial Williamsburg after reading and studying “Meet Felicity,” the story of a spunky, horse-loving Felicity Merriman, caught between Patriot and Loyalist family and friends at the start of the American Revolution.
A trip to Rancho de las Golondrinas, a Spanish colonial living history site near Santa Fe, N.M., and an Indian reservation followed the girls’ completion of “Meet Josefina,” about a Mexican girl, Josefina Montoya, living in New Mexico in 1824 and trying to help run the household after her mother dies.
The girls also have visited historic Cape May, N.J., after reading the “Samantha” series about orphan Samantha Parkington, who grew up during the Victorian era.
Last year, the girls traveled to Milwaukee, Wis., to visit Pioneer Village, a collection of restored buildings and structures dating from the 1840s to early 1900s, after they performed “Home is Where the Heart Is.” That production was based on Kirsten Larson, a 9-year-old girl who arrived in New York from Sweden and was traveling across the country with her family to their new home in Minnesota.
Alexandra Berumen, 14, who will be a freshman at Washington High School in the fall, has been a member of the American Girl Book Club for five years. Not only will she be taking her fifth trip with the club in August, she also is helping Harris direct “Love Has to Win.”
“I like hanging out and reading the books,” she said.
Dinners that are served during the performances reflect the plays’ time period. Last year, for instance, guests enjoyed a Pioneer meal. This year, a soul-food dinner will be served.
At the end of each program, the girls receive the American Girl book set and a miniature doll.
Doors open at 5:30 p.m. Thursday, and the program and dinner begin at 6. Tickets are $10 for adults and $5 for children 10 and younger. For information, call the center at 724-228-0260.