VI. Reading Comprehension
MONROEVILLE, Alabama—Each April and May
during “play season,” as locals call it, the hotels in this town
of 6,300 routinely sell out on weekends. Lines form at the
restaurants. The charter buses carrying ticketholders stream
off the highway.
For nearly all of the 26 years it has been produced, the
play “To Kill a Mockingbird” has been a hit here in the
hometown of the author, Harper Lee. Amateurs re-enact the
novel as a drama in front of and inside the courthouse where
Ms. Lee’s father, the lawyer she shaped into Atticus Finch,
once practiced.
But this year, the 18 performances sold out faster than
ever—4,000 tickets were gone in five days—a surge that
organizers attribute to the excitement over the news that Ms.
Lee, at 88, will publish a second novel this summer, “Go Set
a Watchman,” said Sandy Smith of the Monroeville/Monroe
County Chamber of Commerce.
Christopher Sergel’s stage adaptation is faithful to Ms.
Lee’s portrayal of merciless racism in 1930s Alabama, and
the townspeople over the years have performed it as far away
as Israel and China. But on the opening night for this season,
they performed it as they long have at the Old Monroe
County Courthouse, where the audience sat in benches or
watched from the back-standing room only—just as Ms. Lee
describes the courtroom in Chapter 16 of her novel. Atticus
Finch sat with his arm around the accused, Tom Robbinson.
In the balcony, a black woman sang a mournful plea let her
people go. Jem, Scout’s brother, was brave and responsible.
The audience members included a busload from
Florence, Alabama, five hours north, and people from Texas,
Indiana, Florida, Louisiana and, as often happens, some
international visitors. Goran and Katarina Olsson Trampe of
Mariestad, Sweden, were touring the South and decided to
come to the show after it has sold out; they were let in, they
said, when they mentioned the distance they had traveled.
But Ms. Lee, who lives in an assisted living home three
kilometers from the courthouse, has never attended the play,
according to organizers at the Monoe County Heritage
Museum. The museum has produced the show each year, but
will hand over production next year to a non-profit the author
founded after a licensing dispute. (By Jennifer Crossley
Howard, the New York Times)
【題組】49. Why do Israel and China appear in this report?
(A) They are metaphors indicating the distance and deviation.
(B) They are countries where the international visitors come
from.
(C) They are the disputes of race issues.
(D) They sponsor the performances this year.
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