(mis)UNDERSTANDING MAMMY, a one-woman play with music, is a story of race in America, examined through the lens of Hattie McDaniel’s remarkable life. Hattie achieved stardom by becoming the first African-American to win an Academy Award, but she paid a high price for fame. By playing a succession of maids and cooks, most notably Mammy in “Gone With The Wind,” she became the target of an unrelenting “campaign against Mammyism” led by Walter White of the NAACP who thought her roles were stereotypical and degrading to their race.

The Schoolhouse production will star Tina Fabrique who has received the Kevin Kline Award for her performance as Ella Fitzgerald in Ella. She has appeared on Broadway in Gospel at Colunus, Ragtime, Bring in the Noise, and Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom. The play is written by Joan Ross Sorkin and directed by Seret Scott, a winner of American Theatre’s prestigious Gordon Davidson Award.