Driving Miss Daisy

June 24 – 29

Driving Miss Daisy is the Pulitzer Prize-winning play by Alfred Uhry. The place is the Deep South, the time 1948, just prior to the civil rights movement. Having recently demolished another car, Daisy Werthan, a rich, sharp-tongued Jewish widow of seventy-two, is informed by her son, Boolie, that henceforth she must rely on the services of a chauffeur. The person he hires for the job is a thoughtful, unemployed black man, Hoke, whom Miss Daisy immediately regards with disdain and who, in turn, is not impressed with his employer’s patronizing tone and, he believes, her latent prejudice. But, in a series of absorbing scenes spanning twenty-five years, the two, despite their mutual differences, grow ever closer and their relationship transforms from employer-employee to deep companionship as they navigate issues of race, class, and aging over several decades. This play later inspired the Academy Award-winning film of the same name starring Morgan Freeman and Jessica Tandy.