Screening of Janet Wide Awake: The Hedgepeth-Williams Dream

Please join us for a special screening of Passage Theatre’s Janet Wide Awake: The Hedgepeth-Williams Dream, a play about the history of desegregation in Trenton as told through the stories of two mothers, Gladys Hedgepeth and Berline Williams. Light refreshments will be served.

Janet Wide Awake: The Hedgepeth-Williams Dream

Written by David Lee White, Richard Bradford, and the students at Hedgepeth-Williams Middle School of the Arts

​Directed by Andrew Binger

​In the 1940s, Gladys Hedgepeth and Berline Williams challenged the Trenton school formerly known as Junior High No. 2 and its policy of segregation after their children were not admitted due to their race.

​After a historic legal battle, the New Jersey Supreme Court struck down the widespread practice of segregation in New Jersey public schools.

​Last year, Passage Theatre partnered with Hedgepeth-Williams Middle School of the Arts to complete a residency wherein Passage teaching artists worked with 17 seventh-grade students to write an original show based on the history of their school and its name. These students joined a professional director, actors, designers, and management team to fully mount the production in April 2022, featuring the students onstage! The show reflects both the school’s history and how it affects the students today, as it follows a young girl who, by learning the true story of her school’s past, is empowered to make changes in her present.

Appropriate for ages 10+