One-man play confronts race issues with examination of lynching victim’s life

Professor Patrick J. Sims rehearses for his one-person play, "Ten Perfect," in Lathrop Hall. During the play, Sims portrays 18 characters to tell the story of James Cameron, an African-American who survived a lynching as a teenager in Indiana in 1930. Sims’ public performance of the play is scheduled for Feb. 5-6, 2010, in Lathrop’s Margaret H’Doubler Performance Space.

Last week's Wisconsin Week featured a story about Patrick Sims.

Sims is an assistant professor of acting and director of the Department of Theatre and Drama's Theatre for Cultural and Social Awareness.

Over the years, Sims has been writing and refining a one-man play based on James Cameron's life.

Cameron survived a lynching in 1930 in Marion, Ind., when he was 16. Accused of rape and murder, he was pulled from a jail cell by an angry mob led by the Ku Klux Klan and strung up on a tree limb, his two friends already dead, hanging by nooses.

The characters Sims created have been given life in his play "10 Perfect: A Lynching Survivor Story."

The play imagines Cameron's life and the people in it up until the lynching.

Sims will perform the play at 7:30 p.m. on Friday and Saturday, Feb. 5-6, in the Margaret H'Doubler Performance Space in Lathrop Hall, 1050 University Ave. Working with Sims is director Sheri Williams Pannell.

The full story is available at University Communications.