Description
River City leaps back and forth in time between Civil Rights-era Louisville and today. We begin in Chicago, in the present. Mary is mourning the death of her father, a reticent man named Edward Christopher. Prompted by a responsibility to history,” she travels back to her hometown to uncover her roots.
The play transports us to 1968. A 14-year-old Edward is the only black child at St. Benedict Orphanage. His guardian, Sister Alice, sets him up with a job at Deeley Radio Repair, a shop in Louisville’s predominantly black West End. Edward’s employer Whitney Deeley, an activist and reluctant businessman, enlists Edward to help organize a rally against police brutality. But when the rally turns into a violent uprising, a family secret comes to light: Whitney is Edward’s biological father.
Back in the present, Mary and her husband, Javier, are at odds. Mary has extended her trip to Louisville hoping to find a clue into her father’s past. But her investigation may be cut shirt — Javier has just opened his own restaurant in Chicago and isn’t keen on his pregnant wife living in another city. 
