Alfred Uhry to Speak at Emory

JCRCA Educates Educators

The Center for Israel Education’s Rich Walter leads a presentation on Israel and Judaism to more than 50 teachers at the Georgia Council for the Social Studies annual conference in Athens on Friday, Oct. 23. During the two-day conference, the Jewish Community Relations Council of Atlanta maintained an information table and handed out 250 CDs of educational resources on Judaism and Israel’s history, as well as printed curricula, to help the teachers meet state social studies education requirements.

Uhry to Speak at Emory

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Playwright Alfred Uhry, a Jewish Atlanta native best known for “Driving Miss Daisy,” will participate in a Creativity Conversation at Emory University’s Robert W. Woodruff Library at 6:30 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 18.

The event is open to the public at no charge. Uhry’s plays will be available for purchase, and a question-and-answer session and a signing will follow.

Uhry, also a lyricist and screenwriter, will be in conversation with Randy Gue, the curator of modern political and historical collections at Emory’s Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives and Rare Book Library.

The Rose Library is home to Uhry’s papers, which include photographs, scripts and audiovisual materials.

“The presence of Alfred Uhry here and his collections in the Rose Library represent a convergence of our collecting strengths in the areas of modern literature, Southern history and social justice,” said Rosemary Magee, the director of the Rose Library. “We are delighted to welcome him back to Emory to explore his creative impulses and the importance of archives in mapping individual and shared stories.”

“Driving Miss Daisy” premiered onstage in 1987, and Uhry adapted it into the 1989 film. He received a Pulitzer Prize for the play and an Academy Award for the screenplay, and he has won several Tony Awards.

“Driving Miss Daisy” joins “The Last Night of Ballyhoo” (1996) and “Parade” (1998) in Uhry’s unofficial “Atlanta Trilogy” of plays set in the Atlanta area and focusing on Jewish characters.

“Parade,” a musical based on the Leo Frank case, is being performed by the Kennesaw State University drama department for two shows in November as part of the centennial observance of Frank’s lynching: Thursday, Nov. 19, at 7 p.m. at the Earl Smith Strand Theatre on Marietta Square and Sunday, Nov. 22, at 4 p.m. at The Temple in Midtown. Tickets for the Marietta show are $5 to $20 from ticketing.kennesaw.edu. The Temple show is free with registration at paradetemple.eventbrite.com.

“Atlanta is my home. It’s what I know,” Uhry, a graduate of Druid Hills High School, said from New York, where he lives. “Where you grew up, and what you observed then, is something you carry with you.”