-
Seeing Violet
A human skull. A cowrie shell. A manumission paper. These and other items unearthed during renovations at the historic 18th-century manse that John Marsh has inherited suggest his ancestors were slaveholders. The freedom paper refers to an enslaved woman called Violet. And when John’s wife, Betsy, “sees” a young Black woman in period servant’s dress in their living room, she concludes it must be Violet. Betsy becomes obsessed with finding out who Violet was and what happened to her. Her dogged research reveals some unsettling truths: about the Marsh family’s profitable engagement in the slave trade; about local resistance to confronting the community’s hidden history of slavery; and about her husband’s conviction that white people bear no responsibility for addressing slavery’s legacy. The experience causes Betsy to question her marriage, her priorities, and her future.
Development
Staged reading, Capital Repertory Theatre, Albany, NY 2021
Staged reading, Hibernian Hall, Boston, MA, 2021
Staged reading, Firehouse Center for the Arts, New Works Festival, Newburyport, MA, 2020
Awards
Finalist, New Works Festival, Bay Street Theatre, Sag Harbor, NY, 2023
Finalist, American Dreaming New Play Festival, Middlebury Acting Company,
Middlebury, VT, 2023
Finalist, Todd McNerney Playwriting Award, College of Charleston, Charleston, SC, 2022
Winner, Pestalozzi Prize, Firehouse Center for the Arts, Newburyport, MA. 2020
Semi-Finalist, Blue Ink Playwriting Award, American Blues Theatre, Chicago, IL, 2020
Details
Full-length
Cast: 3
Roles by gender: 2 women, 1 man
Roles by race: 1 Black or African American, 2 white