Review: Pinder’s Kids – Write To Be Scene

Reverend Canon Nelson Pinder was an American civil rights activist and the minister of Parramore’s Episcopal Church of St. John the Baptist until 1997. Reverend Pinder organized sit-ins, lunch-ins, and other peaceful protests at segregated lunch counters and theaters in Orlando. He often organized teenagers and young people to participate, encouraging them to fight for equal rights and access to the same things that White people had.

The story, Pinder’s Kids, was a play written by Barry White, based on the true story of Father Pinder’s nonviolent movement toward desegregation in Orange County, Florida in the 1960s. It was produced by Write To Be Scene, a teen theatre company in Orlando that provides collaborative creative writing, improv theatre-based workshops, and performance opportunities designed to amplify youths’ voices and empower them to feel seen.

I had a chance to see Pinder’s Kids at the Grand Avenue Neighborhood Center on Saturday afternoon, and was ready to be educated about this local hero.

The show is about real teens and starred eleven local teenagers playing a variety of roles, including switching out different roles or the same people but at different ages.

It opened with Jimmy Cooper and Doc, two old men playing checkers in the park, remembering the days of the protests in 1962, and what life has become since that time.

“These kids, man. These kids,” said Jimmy. He lamented about the way some of them dress and behave even while singing the praises of the kids who hustled and started businesses or went to college and started careers.

All of them had one thing in common: “They’re looking for a way out,” Doc and Jimmy both said.

Then we flashed back to 1962, and watched a young Jimmy Cooper talk with his father about the things Father Pinder was doing, and how his mother, Mary, just didn’t understand what Pinder was doing. His father just urged him to be careful, but that he had his approval to keep doing what he was doing.

We jumped between scenes and settings, moving with Jimmy’s mother to her job keeping house for a White family, the Tindales, and having to listen to the father, John, make racist statements about Black people and the trouble they were causing, as well as the threats he made against Jimmy if he ever showed up to his house to see his daughter, Amy.

Jimmy and Amy used to play together when they were kids, but Jimmy wasn’t allowed over there anymore now that he was older. Amy’s father, John, tells Mary and his own wife that Jimmy will meet his end if he ever shows his face around the house.

We follow Jimmy through his interactions with his friends, in the youth group, hanging out, going to a sit-in, and talking with Father Pinder and his fellow protestors. We get a brief history lesson during Father Pinder’s “pep talk” to the youth, where he exhorts them to fight the good fight.

Near the end of the play, we learn that Amy has been injured in a car accident and needs a blood transfusion. Her old friend, Jimmy, is the same blood type and could donate blood to save her, but Amy’s racist father is against the idea. He doesn’t want a Black boy’s blood mixing in with his daughter’s blood, even if it meant that his daughter could die. He is finally forced to confront his own beliefs and realize that they will mean the death of his only child.

We finally make it back to the present day and we can look back at what Jimmy and Doc accomplished 62 years ago and how things have changed and how they have still remained the same.

After the show, the actors participated in a Q&A session with the audience, with people sharing their own ideas and own experiences.

Personally, while the show was informative and entertaining, I think the biggest beneficiaries of the show were the actors themselves. Of the 11 cast members, 4 of them were teenagers, six of them were in their 20s, and only two were in their 40s and 60s.

The young people of the show got to learn about the history lessons present in Barry White’s play and hopefully got to hear some of the stories that their parents and grandparents shared with them as they learned about the history of civil rights activism right there in their own part of Orlando.

For some of these kids, this was their first experience in the theatre, and for others, they were already theatre kids. I hope they get a chance to continue on in the theatrical arts.

Pinder’s Kids is an educational and informative show and it should be showed to other community groups and in schools. I can envision this being trimmed to a shorter version, about 30 minutes in length, and presented to other young people so they can learn about important local history. Maybe it could also be redone as an Orlando Fringe Festival show.

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To learn more about Write To Be Scene, how to participate, and how to support the organization, please visit the Write To Be Scene website.