This Was My Son

World Premiered in-competition at the *Academy Award-qualifying* 23rd Whitaker St. Louis Int'l Film Festival (SLIFF), November, 2014.

West Coast Premiere in-competition at the *Academy Award-qualifying* 41st Seattle International Film Festival, May, 2015.

THIS WAS MY SON is the true story of the American Civil Rights icon, Mamie Till (mother of Emmett Till), and the tragedy that inspired her to spend her life battling social injustice and racial prejudice.

"Her Pain United A Nation." -Mamie Till Mobley Memorial Foundation

"This Was My Son ...pulses with its own strength, based on that singular performance by Mike Wiley." -Mark Bell, FILM THREAT

In THIS WAS MY SON, multi-award winning film and theatre actor, MIKE WILEY (27 IMDb wins: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1211650), in one continuous long-take, channels the historic American Civil Rights heroine, Mamie Till, in a carefully crafted reenactment-a composite of late 1950s interviews.

Mamie Till recounts the heart rending part she played in identifying the body of her only son, Emmett Till, after he had been lynched for whistling at a white woman in Money, Mississippi in 1955. She speaks to the thought process behind the choices she made that helped ignite and then fuel the Civil Rights movement in America. Mamie would go on to spend the rest of her life championing the cause and continuing to tell her cautionary tale of the effects of racial hatred and bigotry.

MIKE WILEY (actor/producer of This Was My Son), a NC-based playwright, director and actor is an MFA graduate of UNC-Chapel Hill. A specialist in documentary theatre, he is the 2010/2014 Lehman Brady Visiting Joint Chair Professor in Documentary Studies and American Studies at Duke University and UNC-Chapel Hill. As founder of Mike Wiley Productions, he currently tours seven original plays, including Dar He: The Story of Emmett Till, One Noble Journey: A Box Marked Freedom and the theatrical adaptation of Tim Tyson’s Blood Done Sign My Name to theatres and educational settings nationwide. He has appeared on Discovery Channel, The Learning Channel and National Geographic Channel and has been featured in Our State magazine, on PBS’ North Carolina Now, and WUNC’s The State of Things in addition to being named Tar Heel of the Week by the (Raleigh, NC) News and Observer. The Parchman Hour, Wiley’s newest work, was featured in as the finale event of the Freedom Riders 50th anniversary commemoration. The production has been produced by Playmakers Repertory Company, Cape Fear Regional Theatre, and continues to tour regionally. More at www.MikeWileyProductions.com.