Five years ago, Barter Theatre piloted an ambitious and inclusive initiative. The purpose was simple: to create a space where Black playwrights could create and develop new plays about the Black Appalachian experience. Black Stories Black Voices and Shine: Illuminating Black Stories were born. The idea was to provide a place where these playwrights could take monologues and scenes from launching point to full length plays, and perhaps, an opportunity to play on the Barter stage in full production. Today, that moment has come to fruition. Trains by Quinton Cockrell is the inaugural play from the Black Stories Black Voices initiative. How fitting for the initiative’s 5th year anniversary?

Trains unfolds in the snug structure of a Black Appalachian home—worn, taut, and charged with memory. Or as our masterful playwright describes it, “…cramped, bleak space with shabby second-hand furniture”. Although set in Knoxville, Tennessee in 1932, the play carries with it the unspoken history of Corbin, Kentucky, where in 1919 Black families were violently ejected by white mobs and forced onto rail cars, expunged from the town in a single night. Quinton’s play is based on real historical events. Many times, Appalachia is imagined as white, rural, and isolated in and around mountains, but this play insists there is more to the story. It restores Black presence to the region’s historical recollection and reminds us, that racial terror, displacement, and survival are as much a part of Appalachian history as mountains, coal mining and bluegrass.

What excites me most about Trains is how it dramatizes our history not as just an external event, but also as an internal condition. Traumatic past here is not just remembered—it is relived and recalled, to be reckoned with; whether the characters are ready to face it head on or not. It shapes language, masculinity, intimacy, and faith. It confronts the line that straddles truth and mendacity. Travis’s nightmares, Lester’s pragmatism, Iyla’s spiritual yearning, and Junior’s longing are all responses to a shared wound that each character carries inversely. The play asks us to contemplate how Black life in Appalachia has required both compromise and resilience, and how those survival strategies are in conflict. In the world of this play, memory is far from passive. In fact, memory here pushes back.

This wonderfully written play asks many questions. What does justice look like when harm is never named? Are restorative justice and social independence too much to demand? What happens when apology is replaced with access? Trains also interrogates forgiveness for past and present transgressions. It asks what/which actions are worthy of forgiving? What does forgiveness look like as power dynamic, privilege, and status? Who benefits and what is there to gain? The questions posed here are not abstract but rather they are ones deeply rooted into the play’s fibers and played out against the backdrop of America’s Great Depression, a time of the blues, and an era of great need.

Yes, this is a Black Appalachian story but not simply because of location alone. Rather, it is because it unveils how Black life has existed, endured, and remembers itself within a region that has often rendered it invisible. How could I not be excited? I invite you here to sit with curiosity, discomfort, beauty, and unresolved questions. Perhaps, Trains doesn’t promise a fully realized catharsis. Perhaps, it instead offers something more challenging: an encounter with the past as it lives on in the present, asking what it will cost us to progress forward. For that, I dig this play. Enjoy the journey ahead!

- Geovonday Jones, Director of Trains

Travis Hampton
James Jiggetts

Lester Hampton
Vince McGill*

Iyla Hampton
Rita Cole*

Junior Greevy
Zacchaeus Kimbrell*

*Denotes member of Actors’ Equity Association, the Union of Professional Actors, and Stage Managers in the United States.

Director
Geovonday Jones

Scenic Designer
Derek Smith

Costume Designer
Lee Alexander Martin

Lighting Designer
Harper Fulmer

Sound Designer
Connor Stevens

Fight Choreographer
Sean Maximo Campos

Fight Captain
Zacchaeus Kimbrell*

Intimacy Coordinator
Ashley Campos

Playwright
Quinton Cockrell

Production Stage Manager
Cindi A. Raebel*

Producing Artistic Director of Barter Theatre
Katy Brown

*Denotes members of the Actors’ Equity Association, the Union of Professional Actors, and Stage Managers in the United States.

Wardrobe Supervisor
Chelsea Bannan

Production Assistant
Brianna Boucher

Lighting and Sound Technician
Shawn Glenn Martin Knost

Production Sponsor

ALICE LINK