In June 2014, Center for Documentary Studies audio director John Biewn produced a podcast, “Emmett and Trayvon,” featuring actor and playwright Mike Wiley, who writes plays that tell true stories from African American history and hires himself to play all the roles.
One of Wiley’s one-man plays, Dar He: The Story of Emmett Till, is about the black Chicago teenager who was murdered in Mississippi in 1955. Biewen tagged along as Wiley performed that play in Florida, not far from where Trayvon Martin lived and died almost a half-century later.
Mike Wiley was a Lehman Brady Visiting Joint Chair Professor in Documentary Studies and American Studies in Spring 2014, and taught the undergraduate course Acting Out Black History. The Center for Documentary Studies coordinates the program, which brings distinguished practitioners and scholars of the documentary arts to Duke University and UNC–Chapel Hill.