The Thaumaturgy Department

In honor of tomorrow’s opening night of Mathew Lopez’ The Whipping Man, here’s a link to a digital copy of the show program.

Richmond Slave Trail is a walking trail that chronicles the history of the trade in enslaved Africans from Africa to Virginia until 1775, and away from Virginia, especially Richmond, to other locations in the Americas until 1865. […] It follows a route traveled by some of the thousands of Africans who made their journey south by crossing the James River chained together in a coffle, or by getting on ships to New Orleans. The trail then follows a route through the slave markets of Richmond….

from the site:

This online resource was created in 2009 as part of an ongoing initiative to help document the history of slavery in Richmond, Virginia. Its sponsors include the Richmond Slave Trail Commission, the public history program of VCU’s Department of History and the Special Collections and Archives department of the VCU Libraries.

This site will function as a learning resource and will help identify images, print sources, manuscript collections, and other online resources related to the history of slavery in Richmond. This project is also intended to identify, acquire, and organize for public access the archives of the Richmond Slave Trail Commission.

For more information about this project please contact Special Collections and Archives. 

Piece on the upcoming production, featuring here our wonderful production dramaturg, guesting in from University of Maryland, Faedra Chatard Carpenter. Read on!

Having dealt with the role of violence and the Supreme Court in bringing about the end of Reconstruction in his last lecture, Professor Blight now turns to the role of national electoral politics, focusing in particular on the off-year Congressional election of 1874 and the Presidential election of 1876. 1874 saw the return of the Democrats to majority status in the Senate and the House of Representatives, as voters sick of corruption and hurt by the Panic of 1873 fled the Republicans in droves. According to many historians, the contested election of 1876, and the “Compromise of 1877,” which followed it, marked the official end of Reconstruction. After an election tainted by fraud and violence, Republicans and Democrats brokered a deal by which Republican Rutherford B. Hayes took the White House in exchange for restoration of “home rule” for the South.

“Kwame Kwei-Armah is the relatively new Artistic Director at CENTERSTAGE in Baltimore. He’s a playwright and an actor. We talk about the challenges of being a playwright and an Artistic Director—the heartbreak of saying “no”; the challenge of finding time to write; the way the writer’s mind impacts the institution. We also talk about his fascination with the African diasporic narrative, in particular from his vantage point as a Brit now dealing with African American narratives. It’s a really exciting set of ideas being blown into the room at one of our most consistently forward thinking regional theaters.”

Twitter feed for the intriguing “Disunion” series.

Photographs, interviews, media, essays, reflections, history, and more at the NEA Big Read blog about Their Eyes Were Watching God. Give a look and a listen.