Photo Flash: HARRIET JACOBS At Central Square Theater

Harriet Jacobs' harrowing true story about her life as a slave in the years leading to the Civil War comes to the stage in Harriet Jacobs, a new play by Lydia R. Diamond. Presented by Underground Railway Theater in collaboration with artists from The Providence Black Repertory Company, Harriet Jacobs is playing Central Square Theater Thursday, January 7 till Sunday, January 31. Press performance is schedule for Sunday, January 10 at 2 PM.

Astonishing and moving, Harriet Jacobs is the story of a remarkable woman's resistance to oppression. To escape a predatory master, Jacobs hid in a crawl space for seven years, watching her children grow up under the care of her own grandmother. In Lydia R. Diamond's adaptation of Jacobs' autobiography, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Harriet reaches out from her own era and compels us to look at our history as if for the first time. Directed by Megan Sandberg-Zakian, this unsparing yet poetic coming-of-age story is based on the only published book-length slave narrative written by a woman.

Harriet Jacobs also has local community connections: after her escape from slavery, she spent years running a boarding house for Harvard students, the site of which is marked on the Cambridge African-American Heritage Trail. She is also buried in Mt. Auburn Cemetery.
Lydia Diamond's plays include: Stick Fly (in production at The Huntington Theatre in February '10), Voyeurs de Venus, The Bluest Eye, The Gift Horse, Stage Black, and Harriet Jacobs. Producing Theatres include: Arena Stage, Huntington, New Vic, Goodman, Steppenwolf, Long Wharf, Hartford Stage, McCarter, Playmakers Rep, Providence Black Rep, Chicago Dramatists, Congo Square, TrueColors, The Matrix, and Company One. Commissions include: Steppenwolf, Humana/Victory

Gardens, McCarter, Huntington, and Roundabout. Lydia is on faculty at Boston University, is an ‘06/07 Huntington Playwright Fellow, and a current TCG Executive Board Member.
Underground Railway Theater connects professional theater with community, combining actors, bold design and music to create theater of social content and great visual beauty, theater that challenges and delights, informs and celebrates. The company has a 30-year history of commissioning and presenting new works, and is now in residence at the Central Square Theater.
The Providence Black Repertory Company (Black Rep) presents performances that bring people together, provoke thought, inspire hope, and create understanding. Seasons are curated to engage in a conversation with popular "American" narratives, with a view towards the interrogation and re-appropriation of its mythology, providing unique experiences inspired by the cultural traditions of the African Diaspora.

This is the first creative partnership between Underground Railway and Black Rep. The actors come from both Providence and Boston, the director is the resident director for Black Rep, and the design team includes artists who have worked with both companies. After the Cambridge performances, a chamber version of the play will be performed in Providence (dates and venue to be announced).

Director Megan Sandberg-Zakian was the Associate Director of The Providence Black Repertory Company from 2005 till 2009, where her production of Tracy Letts' Bug was nominated for four RI Motif Awards including Best Director and Best Production. Other recent projects include a contemporary rock-musical version of Brecht's The Good Person of Szechwan (Cornish College, Seattle), an adaptation of King Lear (The 52nd Street Project, NYC), and a workshop of Jacqui Parker's Jeanie Don't Sing No Mo' at the Huntington Theatre. This spring she will helm the Rhode Island premiere of Hedwig and the Angry Inch at Perishable Theatre.

The Acting Ensemble includes Kortney Adams, Ramona Alexander, Sheldon Best, De'Lon Grant, Mishell Lilly, Raidge, Obehi Janice and Kami Smith. The design team for Harriet Jacobs includes Susan Zeeman Rogers (set), winner of an NEA-TCG Designer Fellowship and several awards from Independent Reviewers of New England Chip Schoonmaker (costumes), winner of multiple Emmy awards; David Roy (lighting) who has worked at Black Rep, Trinity, and The Public Theatre in NYC; Clarice LaVerne Thompson (music); and Melody Ruffin Ward (choreography).

Conversations with special guests, local academics from Harvard University and MIT, and the actors will follow select performances (see partial list below). There will also be receptions after select performances.

Harriet Jacobs plays at Central Square Theater, 450 Mass. Ave. in Cambridge, Thursday, January 7 through Sunday, January 31. Performances are Thursdays at 7:30 PM, Friday and Saturday at 8 PM with matinees on Sundays at 2 PM. There will be additional evening performances on Wednesday, January 13 at 7:30 PM and Sunday, January 10 at 7:00 PM. Tickets, priced at $35; $25 for seniors; $20 for students with a valid ID; $15 for student rush (day of performance), can be purchased by calling (866) 811-4111, online at www.centralsquaretheater.org, or at the Central Square Theater box office. For box office hours, group discounts, and more info call (617) 576-9278 x213. For information on student matinees, contact Maggie Moore Abdow, Education Director, Underground Railway Theater, (617) 576-9278 x207. 

Thurs., Jan. 7 7:30 pm Talk back with Timothy Patrick McCarthy, Adjunct Lecturer on Public Policy and Program Director of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy, Harvard University (Harvard Night)

Sat, Jan 9 & 16 7:00 pm Pre-show symposia, free with the cost of admission

On related topics, such as

Slavery Past and Present (with Catherine Caldwell Harris, Associate Professor of Psychology, Boston University)

For final schedule and presenters, visit www.centralsquaretheater.org
Sun, Jan. 17 2:00 pm Talk back with Kenneth Reeves, Cambridge City Councilor and member of the Cambridge African American History Trail (in honor of MLK Jr. Day on 1/18)

Thurs, Jan. 21 7:30 pm Talk back with Kenneth S. Greenberg, Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, Suffolk University

Thurs, Jan. 28 7:30 pm Talk back with Catherine Caldwell Harris, Associate Professor of Psychology, Boston University

At Central Square Theater, a new state-of-the-art community-based theatrical arts facility, audiences will find, under one roof, the distinctive repertoires of two award-winning non-profit professional companies, The Nora Theatre Company and Underground Railway Theater, as well as collaborative projects drawing on their creative synergy. Schools, families and community groups will benefit from outreach and educational programs, and local businesses will enjoy increased foot traffic and new customers. As the first permanent home for these two theater companies, Central Square Theater will be a vibrant hub of theatrical, educational and social activity, where artists and audiences come together to create theater vital to our communities.

The seeds of the Central Square Theater (CST) were sown in 1997, with a partnership between The Nora Theatre Company, Underground Railway Theater, and the Community Development Department of the City of Cambridge, which brokered a relationship with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). MIT constructed the building and provided an extraordinary 20-year lease commitment at under $5 per square foot -- a contribution valued at more than $2 million over time.

For more information, please call 617-576-9278 or go to www.centralsquaretheater.org.

Photo credit: Elizabeth Stewart