Story time

In the final days of rehearsals for “The Story,” MU’s upcoming drama about truth, racial equality and professional integrity, director Clyde Ruffin isn’t losing his nerve and never raises his voice. Rather, he calls on the actors to dig deep and personalize their characters.

“It’s my job to empower the cast and make them feel safe to explore their own creativity,” Ruffin said.

MU senior Erin Burton feels his trust as she works to develop a key persona in the play.

“The Story,” written by prize-winning playwright Tracey Scott Wilson, is a fictional drama set in an unspecified big-name newsroom. The play focuses on one reporter, Yvonne Robinson, and the truthfulness of her article about a racially complex murder investigation.

Burton plays Pat Johnson, the diligent newsroom boss who has risen from the business ranks with a goal to improve the image of blacks in the media.

“Prof. Ruffin communicates what he wants, but he’s laid-back about it,” Burton said. “It gives us a chance to find our own voice with our characters.”

Burton said she found her character’s voice by drawing on her memory and observation of older members of the black community — an aunt, a grandparent’s friend or someone from Columbia’s Second Missionary Baptist Church, where Ruffin serves as pastor.

“In church he’s not really theatrical, not in the way you would think about somebody being theatrical,” Burton said. “He’s not eccentric or over-the-top, just very collected and thoughtful in his presentation, like the way he teaches.”

MU graduate student Tiffanie Jones portrays Yvonne as strong and confident. However, Yvonne is frustrated by her placement in the paper’s Outlook section, created to produce positive images about the black community. Her passion to produce stories that will move her out of Outlook, where she feels too confined as a journalist, and into a “real news” section may ultimately cause her to manipulate the truth.

Jones also has found Ruffin’s empowering methods effective in letting the actors reach a personal understanding with their character. “Yvonne is a wild woman,” Jones said, “but I didn’t truly understand her strength until we started practicing and I figured out how to portray the full depth of her character.”

For MU junior Alex Trumble, it took practice to shape his difficult character. Trumble plays Jeff Morgan, a white journalist who works for the Metro section and has a relationship with Yvonne.

“Jeff is the ‘trust-fundy white man’ who feels kind of trapped and somewhat reserved about working with African-Americans,” Trumble said. “To do something like this part, we’re encouraged to pull our body, mind and voice all in line together, and it works.”

Each of the leads, including MU junior Daniel Willis and sophomore Cescily Turner, found subtext to create characters from off the page. Yet, they shared a vision of how the play should come together. They attribute that common vision to Ruffin.

He and the cast made a conscious decision to leave many questions unanswered, empowering the audience with the same decision-making potential as the director has given to the actors.

“It seems sometimes that we are constantly bombarded by print and visual media,” said Ruffin, “and the issues of words and truth are more and more important for us all.”