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92 pages

English

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Break the Stage tells the story of Tia Lewis, a troubled teen at an urban Florida high school, who struggles to win her father's approval and the respect of her step team, only to discover she must confront her own faults before she can lead the team to the Nationals. Tia's journey of self-discovery includes an ensemble cast of multi-racial high school students, each with their own personal issues, who clash with Tia's style and her inability to deal with the death of her mother and her father's unrealistic expectations. Slavery in America created the legacy for stepping. Denied the freedom to communicate, against the rules of their owners, slaves clapped their hands, stomped their feet, and uttered sounds to preserve their culture. But for Tia, as a black girl and supposedly free today, she couldn't help but wonder if slaves back then didn't want more than just being legally free. "Being free won't guarantee people will respect you. Being free doesn't mean people will respect your dream of what you want in life... what you want to be. Where does that come from? How do you get anyone to listen?" Therein lies the message of Break the Stage and Tia's story. Freedom is more than a legal status. Freedom means the chance, the ability, and the means to pursue our dreams.

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Children's

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Publié par	First Edition Design Publishing
Date de parution	30 septembre 2014
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781622876815
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0198€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

BREAK THE STAGE
Erik Wolter

First Edition Design Publishing
BREAK THE STAGE

First Edition Design Publishing
Break The Stage
Copyright ©2014 Erik V. Wolter

ISBN 978-1622-876-64-8 PRINT
ISBN 978-1622-876-81-5 EBOOK

LCCN 2014943190

August 2014

Published and Distributed by
First Edition Design Publishing, Inc.
P.O. Box 20217, Sarasota, FL 34276-3217
www.firsteditiondesignpublishing.com

ALL R I G H T S R E S E R V E D. No p a r t o f t h i s b oo k pub li ca t i o n m a y b e r e p r o du ce d, s t o r e d i n a r e t r i e v a l s y s t e m , o r t r a n s mit t e d i n a ny f o r m o r by a ny m e a ns ─ e l e c t r o n i c , m e c h a n i c a l , p h o t o - c o p y , r ec o r d i n g, or a ny o t h e r ─ e x ce pt b r i e f qu ot a t i o n i n r e v i e w s , w i t h o ut t h e p r i o r p e r mi ss i on o f t h e a u t h o r or publisher .
BREAK THE STAGE
By
Erik V Wolter

Story
by
Erik V Wolter and Dalas L Davis
DEDICATION

For all those whose freedom was denied by enslavement yet found the courage to persevere, your struggle to safeguard a heritage by dance movements, sounds, and hand-claps when your voices were repressed was not in vain.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Many thanks to my new friend Dalas L. Davis, story consultant for this project. I am honored and grateful to be given the opportunity to write both the novel and screenplay for Break the Stage . Dalas will direct and act in the feature film adaptation of this book, and his production Company Fishers of Men Entertainment will serve as producers.
Special thanks to Executive Producer of the film, Adam C Barnes, Founder and Executive Director of Step-in-School Inc. and Chief Executive Officer of Break the Stage National Step League. His insight into the world of stepping and the resources he provided were invaluable to the novel and screenplay.
And to Sandra Rivas Cole, the exuberant and dedicated Advanced Placement Art teacher at Lake Howell High School in Winter Park, Florida, thank you for graciously offering your creative talents and providing the perfect cover art for this project.
Thanks too must go to my fellow writers, former students and colleagues, family, and friends for their constructive comments and advice at every stage of the writing process of the book and screenplay.
Most of all, without my wife Nancy’s support and love I never would have “stepped” across the finish line and been able to type THE END or FADE OUT. Thanks Nance.
A PROLOGUE

Other than the glow from a computer screen, the room was dark. A young female face was partly illuminated. Her eyes followed the cursor as she scrolled down and read.
____________________
Under a scorching East Texas mid-day sun, with a two-story plantation home and its massive pillars in the background, a hoe-gang of female black slaves troweled a cotton field.
The year was 1847 and the United States was in the midst of its almost three year war with Mexico over disputes still festering after the annexation of Texas.
A huge black superintendent, in his thirties, a slave himself with privileges, cracked the whip into the bone-dry dirt as one slave faltered.
“Shove that hoe. Keep up,” he yelled.
On horseback, a white middle-aged Overseer trotted over and stopped in front of them. Taunting the slaves, including the superintendent, he opened his canteen and took a long gulp. The parched female slaves stole a look as the water trickled out and spilled down his neck. He spotted them before they could look away. With the expression and evil-eye of sociopaths down through the ages, he poured the rest of his water on the ground.
They dared not let their eyes wander to him, but listened as the splatter of the stream of water from the canteen met the baked Texas earth.
Dust rose from a dirt road lined by a bright white picket fence that led to the plantation. It caught the attention of the Overseer.
Escorted by armed horsemen, front and rear, five male black slaves, shackled together in chains and collared at their necks, shuffled in lock-step rhythm as their bare feet stomped the ground. In unison, a steady percussion beat filled the air from alternating hand claps and a whoosh sound from their mouths.
Each strapping bare and buffed upper body was covered with welts and all five had a crude ‘R’ hand-etched into their foreheads.
The horseman at the rear towed a Mexican thirteen-year-old boy. Hands tied together at the wrist and the end of the rope secured to the horseman’s saddle, the boy stumbled along behind.
The Overseer jabbed his spurs into the side of his horse and galloped down the road to meet the runaways. When the slaves saw him coming, they were quick to silence their chant and claps, but stomped in place.
The Overseer pulled up in front of the First Horseman.
“I count five. You better not tell me one made it across that border.”
“Damn Mexican soldiers started shooting at us, Boss.”
“That will cost you boys… plenty. And not just money.” Their faces dropped. Yet knowing their fate, they nodded. The Overseer noticed the boy.
“What the hell you doing with that?” The boy stared at the ground. The Second Horseman took responsibility.
“Caught him stealing food from our camp. So we thought…”
“You thought? You thought wrong. Look at that scrawny… Does he have a name?”
“Don’t talk English, Boss.”
“Mr. Reed doesn’t need any more mouths to feed. Get them out of here. I’ll take care of the lashes tomorrow.”
The slaves started up their cadence again. Furious, the Overseer pulled his pistol from his holster and fired a full round of six shots at their feet. They changed their gait to a walk.
“And Mr. Reed does not want them doing that. Hear me?”
“Got it, Boss,” they said.
“See if Millie can use the little Mex here to clean the latrine.”
The Overseer stared after them, as the entourage headed for a shack with bars on the windows. The Second Horseman led the boy around to the rear of the plantation house.
At dawn the next morning, a light rain tap danced on the tin roofs of the slave quarters. A steamy fog billowed off the rock-hard ground. In front of the plantation home, each of the five runaways were hunched over and chained tight by their neck collars to separate poles, facing the front porch. Morning lanterns lit up inside the house.
Led by the black Superintendent, slave women, men, and children approached. As if on cue, the runaways stomped their feet. With a precision beat. Hands clapped. Hands slapped thighs. Strange noises exhaled a rap. A pop. A bark. A whoosh. In rhythm. Melodic. The approaching slaves picked up on the communication. Their bodies moved ever-so-slightly to the same beat. Unseen at the end of the porch, the Mexican boy peeked around the corner.
All quieted as owner Reed and his ten-year-old son came out to the porch. The young brash and pretentious heir to the estate and by law future owner of every black person who stood there, smiled as the Overseer and the two horsemen rode up and dismounted. Whip in hand, the Overseer nodded to the elder Reed.
“Good morning, Sir. How many will it be?” Reed glanced to his son.
“Twenty. Each,” the boy shouted and grinned. Mr. Reed smiled and patted him on the back.
“So it shall be,” his father said with a nod to the Overseer.
With full authority from the owner of the property, the Overseer was now ready to carry out the customary punishment. Runaways who erred by challenging the system and then dared to affront their master with a forbidden ritual to preserve their African tribal culture would not be tolerated.
Snapping his whip to intimidate those called to witness, the Overseer marched up to the first runaway. One Horseman carried a can marked ‘Turpentine’. The other Horseman had a bottle labeled ‘Red Pepper’.
The women slaves clasped hands to pray and the men stood in quiet defiance in anticipation of the first strike. They held firm to the end, as the Overseer delivered twenty lashes in rapid fire. While he turned to the next runaway, the Horseman poured the turpentine on the open wounds, and his partner followed up with a dousing of red pepper. The runaway flexed and trembled but stayed the course. Up on the porch, thoroughly amused, Reed and son laughed at the cruelty they had ordered.
About to strike the second runaway, the Overseer stopped half-way into the motion when interrupted…
Feet stomped. Hands clapped. Thighs Slapped. Strange noises exhaled. A Rap. A Pop. A Bark. A Whoosh. In rhythm. Melodic.
All eyes shifted to the corner of the porch. The Mexican boy, with a contemptuous sneer, replicated the ‘dance’ of the slaves. Taken aback at first by the boy’s audacity, the Overseer froze like everyone else. Then he shot a glare to the Superintendent who rushed over to the boy, threw him over his shoulder, and carted him to the shack with the bars on the window.
On the way, the sounds from the boy’s mouth never stopped but became meshed with the familiar sound of the whip as it ripped into the bare skin of the next slave. Young Reed’s eyes darted from his father to the Mexican boy and the runaways. He tugged on Mr. Reed’s sleeve when…
“Tia. I’m home.” The computer screen went dark.
__________________________________________
Yeah, so no big deal, right? Most people know about slavery, or think they do. Had it in school, saw movies, but slavery is gone now. Yet, not even the movie that won the Oscar in 2014 told everything. Yes, people still argue bout racism, prejudice, discrimination… but that’s not part of this story.
If you’re a black high school girl today like Tia Lewis of Orlando Florida, what happened on that plantation means much more.
Some white guy dissing female slaves can’t be a surprise to anybody, not even that hoe-gang. But to a black girl like Tia, as she read this online, she couldn’t believe those girls didn’t want more than just being free. Being free won’t guarantee people will