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, New Works Festival, Firehouse Center for the Arts, Newburyport, MA, 2020 (scheduled).

Awards
Winner, Pestalozzi Prize for Best Full-Length Play, New Works Festival, Firehouse Center for the Arts, Newburyport, MA, 2019

Details

Full-length
Cast: 3
Roles by gender:  2 women, 1 man
Roles by race: 1 Black or African American, 2 white


Read the first act:

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