We at the IRT are truly excited to be producing a world premiere production of a remarkable play in March and April: “The Reclamation of Madison Hemings,” by Charles Smith. This play is the first production in our 2021-22 INclusion Series, where we focus on works by playwrights of color, dramatizing stories that create insight for contemporary audiences into racial memory and justice. We chose this script to produce because we have a long relationship with playwright Charles Smith, who has created three commissioned plays for us in the past. The subject matter is particularly compelling, revealing a historic moment that is rarely dramatized. Many of us have heard of Sally Hemings, an enslaved woman who served Thomas Jefferson, but I personally knew very little about her before reading this play. I think I’m not alone in enjoying plays, films and books that reveal a new chapter of history that I didn’t know — it causes us to reflect not only on the new insights themselves, but on the fact that history is too often only seen through the experiences of those with the most power. Sally Hemings may have had very little power, but her legacy in American history is deep.
Smith’s play focuses on one of Sally Hemings’ sons, Madison Hemings, who, at the time the play takes place, is in his early 60s. He and Israel Jefferson, a formerly enslaved man, return to Monticello in 1866, shortly after the end of the Civil War, to find Jefferson’s famous plantation, where both men were born and raised, now in ruins, 40 years after his death. The men come with very different views of their shared past: Israel has fond memories of his time at Monticello, of the warmth of family and the opportunities he had for advancement, even while living in bondage. Madison’s memories are clouded with resentment and anger, principally of the famous man who was his biological father who refused to offer him love or recognition, but also of his mother, who Madison felt accepted her fate with too little opposition. Madison is haunted by a past that won’t let him find peace; the play captures something of his embattled journey to find a way to live in celebration of his ancestors.
One of the most compelling features of the play is how playwright Charles Smith finds a way to honor the many enslaved individuals who have largely disappeared from the history of Monticello. He said this about the inspiration:
“After visiting the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C., the National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Alabama, and the Whitney Plantation (museum) in Louisiana, I became fascinated by how the mere listing of names had the power to paint a vivid picture of the past, while keeping the present present and vital. For several years, I wondered if there was a theatrical equivalent to what these memorials were doing. When I started researching ‘The Reclamation of Madison Hemings’ and came across the names of hundreds of enslaved people who lived and died at Monticello, I realized that this was my chance to find out.”
The play is a heart-churning, brain-spinning two hours spent in the company of these two remarkable and argumentative men. As we witness their struggle, we also witness them rewriting the narrative of American history in an inclusive way, giving voice to those denied a place by the hideous racial power dynamics of slavery. It’s a play that deserves to be seen by everyone — particularly people who care about how the past affects us all, how families define us, how legacy matters. We hope it will bring a lot of people to the theater for a deep and emotional experience and the opportunity to talk about this play to family and friends and participate in our community discussions. It also promises to be a very beautiful production visually and aurally, with incredible scenery, lighting projections and music. It plays March 23-April 16 at the IRT, and we are delighted to be sharing it with our Indiana audiences.
Next in the INclusion Series is another story of racial memory and justice, Jessica Huang’s “The Paper Dreams of Harry Chin.” This play spans several decades in the mid-20th century in the lives of a family driven by the Chinese Exclusion Act, a little-known piece of legislation which forbade the legal immigration of Chinese people to the United States for several decades. The play is based on the experiences of an actual family in Minnesota whose patriarch immigrated illegally in hopes of saving his starving village in China, only to create an American family and find himself torn between the two. This production plays April 19-May 22.
These two plays share a strong sense of how the past haunts and changes its characters, as they strive to create lives that reconcile past and present while fighting to have their stories honored as part of the American narrative. Please join us in experiencing these remarkable stories onstage at the IRT this spring.
Janet Allen is the Margot Lacy Eccles Artistic Director of Indiana Repertory Theatre. Contact her at jallen@irtlive.com.
