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For Black History Month, 91���� Today is spotlighting students, alumni, faculty and staff in our university community who are taking an active role in making history and creating positive change in the world.

Iyona (pronounced eye-yawn-uh) Nicole is a senior theatre performance major in 91����’s School of Theatre and Dance. 91���� Today spoke with her about her time at 91���� and her role as high school teacher Georgia Grimm in “Trial by Fire,” a play about banned books and student activism.

The play was written by playwright and 91���� staffer Eric Mansfield, assistant vice president of content strategy and communications in University Communications and Marketing. The performances are the first in a series of events in the May 4 Education Committee’s 2025 May 4 Event Schedule as part of 91����’s ongoing commitment to using lessons from history to guide us as a vital expression of our university values and culture. 

“Trial by Fire” opens on Feb. 7. Tickets for the opening night sold out quickly, and performances for the rest of the play’s run on Feb. 8 and 9 are also sold out.

Finding Georgia Grimm

Playing high school teacher Georgia Grimm is Nicole’s first leading role. Previously, she has played a Greek god in “Somewhere: A Primer for the End of Days,” and Rebecca Nurse in “The Crucible,” in which she was also an understudy for the role of Elizabeth Proctor. She also has worked behind the scenes in several productions and was a member and captain of Legacy Dance Crew. She said that “being part of that team allowed me to build many friendships and altered my performance for dance and performance.

She has also performed in “Color Cabaret” with the Black Theater Association and in “The Company You Keep” with Adam Newborn’s Spring 2024 Suzuki Methods Class. “Each moment where I get to share the stage with people who are in the same positions as me taught me things a textbook couldn’t,” Nicole said.

Nicole says that in preparing to play Georgia Grimm, she researched and read the books that connect Georgia with her students and took time to build perspectives as to how the character feels about different topics. She sees the connection in the subjects of the play and the historic activism of Black United Students at 91���� and the tragic events of May 4, 1970.

“I’ve been able to step into Georgia’s shoes the past few months,” Nicole said. “I would say the level of protest is what connects the two. Protesting only begins with allowing yourself to become educated, making signs and chanting. Sacrifice is a silent decision that makes the loudest impact.” 

She added, “In both May 4th and ‘Trial by Fire’ there’s a mutual level of valuing life and occupation, both of which are put at risk. When I understood that, it made the connection clear to me.”

Looking for Balance and Inspiration in Her Performance

In working out how she would play Georgia Grimm, Nicole had to step back for a moment and feel the true heart of her character. “At one point I realized that I put way too much trauma into this character; that it overshadowed the amount of love that exists inside her,” she said. “The last thing I wanted was to be yelling for an hour and 30 minutes. I think the most difficult, yet exciting part about playing this character is, in fact, finding joy.”

“There’s a balance between the positive and negative that needs to be pointed up for the dynamics of the play to land properly,” she said. Nicole circled back to her foundational inspiration for the character: teachers she had loved from fiction and reality, like Mr. Feeny from “Boy Meets World,” Miss Frizzle from “The Magic School Bus, “Erwin Sikowitz from “Victorious,” and the teacher who inspired this play, Summer Boismier.

Following Summer Boismier

The real-life inspiration for this play was Oklahoma teacher Summer Boismier who, in 2022, was forced to resign from her teaching position after receiving death threats for teaching banned books in her classroom and providing QR code access to banned books online. In 2024, the Oklahoma State Board of Education unanimously voted to revoke her teaching license.

Boismier posted on X (Twitter) “I will not apologize for sharing publicly available information about library access with my students. My livelihood will never be as important as someone’s life or right to read what they want. I fully intend to fight this revocation and the law that enables it: HB 1775.”

Nicole followed Boismier on social media and said that she "found the most poetry in spaces where Boismier was posting freely and authentically" about her experience. She said it was important to her to get Boismier’s perspective directly. “She has made several threads on Twitter (X) about the importance of adults and how older people should value the youth around them,” she said. “There’s the weight of acting on your beliefs in order to give them their own freedoms and how she is determined to make that sacrifice.”

As a young adult, Nicole said that she finds herself as a stage of life that’s in-between youth and adulthood. Her own parents raised her with the intention of giving her the kind of life that they weren’t able to have. Nicole said she cherishes that belief and feels a specific responsibility to be there for those who are younger than her. “I may not know everything,” she said. “But I will always do what I can.”

‘I Want to Keep Learning”

Nicole is on track to walk the stage at 91����’s Spring Commencement Ceremonies as part of the Class of 2025. Post-graduation, she said “I want to keep learning. As long as I’m learning, then I’m happy.” 

She said that if you had asked about her plans after graduation, she would have said that she “ideally just wanted to rest.” She said that the most prominent reason that she came to college was that she wanted more time “to figure myself out.” “Acting,” Nicole said, “has always been something that I wanted to do, and I figured that college would be the only time I could know if this was something really for me.”

Over the past four years, Nicole said that she found herself “overworked and overwhelmed.” She said “Only recently those layers have shed beneath me and left immense momentum. I’ve learned the most this past year because I get to reflect on all those hardships, I’ve found myself facing I’ve learned how much I love what I do.” 

The total eclipse on April 8, 2024, was an “incredible” watershed moment for Nicole. “As corny as it may sound, looking back at it now, participating in a once-in-a-lifetime event with the people who have been with me during my worst and best moments and who made it a point to support me through it all, has glazed just another layer of love and appreciation I have for them,” she said. ‘They’re a part of my history in all the best ways.”

Feeling the message of ‘Trial By Fire”

Nicole hopes that the play will emphasize the role of activism in turbulent times. “After watching the show, I hope the audience can recognize that despite the waves of change that we as a country are facing, there are so many people of all walks of life who will not hesitate to do the work and risk it all,” she said. “Those people exist. They have a voice and if we really support them, we need to give them the mic.”