In his acclaimed 1985 book, Common Ground: A Turbulent Decade in the Lives of Three American Families, Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Anthony Lukas chronicles Boston’s battle over court-ordered busing to desegregate schools.
Now, Kirsten Greenidge, a College of Fine Arts associate professor of playwriting and theater arts, and Emerson College director Melia Bensussen have refashioned the narrative for 21st-century audiences. Their new play, Common Ground Revisited, not only taps unpublished material that the late Lukas left behind, but uses his seminal book as a conduit for the different voices that embody the racial narrative of Boston today.
“There are so many different lenses,” Greenidge says, “of who tells history, who speaks history, who researches it, and whose work gets honored.”