Joy Boothe from North Carolina had this to say about We Did It Together:
“I am deeply moved and inspired by the opportunity I had yesterday to hear, learn from, and viscerally experience stories from the town of Jonesborough, Tennessee, brought to life in a phenomenal play, We Did It Together, A New Play at the McKinney Center. The play is showing next weekend too and I highly recommend it. Here’s how the process works: Locals share stories with one another about their lives, about their families and ancestors, about experiences that are pivotal to their home. Then those stories are woven together into a play that is performed by both community members, relatives of those who the stories are about, and professional theater folks. It was phenomenal. The performance was deeply moving, funny, inspiring, and provocative. Yet there was a different power present knowing that the play was about real people, locals, and their stories about the place where I was. I can’t explain the sensation of being in the audience with a 90 something year old woman who is watching her story played out with a young woman playing her as the nurse she was during World War II. Or to talk afterwards with one of the actors who was also the real-life son of the lead story about his parents and his father being the first Black Alderman, Ernest McKinney. What a blessing to hear Ernest Jr.’s stories about what his parents were like, what it was for him to live through integration in that town and how that connected to the parts that were in the play and the spirit of the town of Jonesborough. I’m feeling a lot of gratitude and also creative sparks of how and where else processes like this could be medicine for our communities. I’d love to see this process happening in every community, especially ones I’m connected to.”

We Did It Together 2023 Spring Remount

Set in mid-twentieth century Jonesborough, Tennessee, We Did It Together weaves compelling true-life stories in an original play with music, where ordinary people reveal their extraordinary and unexpected lives. We Did It Together explores the ways that the families and neighborhoods in this small Appalachian community have come together to accomplish great things.

Written by Jules Corriere

Directed by Richard Owen Geer

Original Music by Heather McCluskey

Choreographed by Kevin Iega Jeff

Auditions:

December 12, 5-8PM

December 13, 5-8PM

Performances:

February 3, 7:30

February 4, 2:00 and 7:30

February 5, 2:00

February 10, 7:30

February 11, 2:00 and 7:30

February 12, 2:00

All shows take place at the McKinney Center

Tickets:

$17 general admission

$13 Seniors and Students

$13 groups of 10 or more

Purchase online at Jonesborough.com/tickets or call the Historic Visitors Center at: 423-753-1010

We Did It Together

Set in the mid-twentieth century in Jonesborough, Tennessee, We Did It Together weaves compelling true-life stories in a new original play with show-stopping music and dance. The play focuses on ordinary people of this small community who accomplish remarkable feats as they are caught in extraordinary times. Teenage girls called to serve in the Cadet Nurse Corps during WWII; a doctor and his family in Cuba forced to flee as Castro’s rebel’s take over, leading them to find freedom in Northeast Tennessee; the election of Ernest McKinney, the first African American Alderman to serve in Jonesborough; a historic home filled with otherworldly guests, and the famous Rambo cattle drive on Greenwood Drive and Spring Street. We Did It Together explores the ways that the families and neighborhoods in this small Appalachian community have come together to accomplish great things.

This play is the fourth in a series of original community plays at the McKinney Center written by playwright Jules Corriere, who this month won and placed in eight international film festivals, including taking first place at the Hollywood Just 4 Shorts Screenplay Competition and is a finalist in the Los Angeles International Screenplay Awards. Her winning screenplay mirrors the style of We Did It Together, which celebrates the extraordinary lives of ordinary people.

Joining Corriere on the production are the original creative team members who directed, composed, and choreographed Jonesborough’s first community play, I Am Home, in 2011. Director Richard Owen Geer, composer Heather McCluskey, music director and accompanist Brett McCluskey, and choreographer Kevin Iega Jeff of Deeply Rooted Dance Company in Chicago, joined by local set designer J.J.Jeffers will bring this exciting play to life.