The Works of JuneteenthVA:
Using performing arts and conversation to
heal society from the wounds of slavery without shame or blame
All works written by JuneteenthVA founder Sheri Bailey unless otherwise indicated
Some works listed below are available for viewing on this website - click here or on the title listed below.
THE HISTORY PLAYS AND OTHER WORKS
In addition to bringing history to life, this group of historical narratives are specifically designed to create a foundation for community or classroom conversation about the history of slavery without shame or blame. As noted, some items are available to view in video. Others exist as scripts ready for production.
Abolitionists' Museum The cornerstone of the History Plays, Abolitionists’ Museum has been performed numerous times throughout Virginia. In the story, anarchy reigns as Harriet Tubman, Abraham Lincoln, Sojourner Truth, John Brown, Nat Turner, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and David Walker — wax figures in a museum — debate whether or not to burn the Confederate flag recently hung in their place of residence. (video,1 hr 5 mins)
“Nat Turner Killed My Family” -- Video Clip Of Audience Response To Abolitionists’ Museum This clip is a powerful example of what can happen at the performances of a history play. Audience participation in the form of post-performance dialogue is an integral part of every history play performance. During this 2009 performance, one audience member couldn’t wait for the performance to end to express her reaction. Partway into the play, the woman interrupted the performance to shout, “Nat Turner killed my family!” She yelled at the actor playing Nat Turner as if he were Nat Turner. The passion in her voice so power, it was as if the event happened last week, not hundreds of years ago. Her outburst ultimately led to a deep and meaningful post-performance discussion. (video, 3.5 mins)
Army Of 1: James Armistead Lafayette This narrative is based on James Armistead Lafayette, an enslaved man who spied on the British for General Washington and the Patriots to help win Independence. (video, 20 mins)
Ben & Jefferson This play stars Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Banneker, born to a mother who was born free and a father who was a freed slave. Self-taught in many disciplines including astronomy and surveying, Banneker wrote and published almanacs and helped survey the original borders of the District of Columbia. He knew Thomas Jefferson and their correspondence is the basis of this moderated conversation that highlights their connection: these two thinkers and tinkerers were also pen pals. (video, 21 mins)
The Making Of Afrikan Kingz & Queenz Afrikan Kingz & Queenz is a game show musical comedy starring Cleopatra VII and Hannibal, Ruler of Carthage, as contestants on Egyptian Squares, a spoof on TV’s Hollywood Squares. This short clip includes rehearsal footage and a series of interviews with actors explaining the meaning of their roles in the play. (video, 4 mins)
The Two Harriets This play offers a dialogue between Harriet Tubman and Harriet Beecher Stowe in song and story.
Bigger Than Life: The Story Of Robert Smalls (in development) Smalls, born into slavery, freed himself, his crew, and their families by commandeering a Confederate transport ship that subsequently became a Union warship. Many view his accomplishments as having helped convince President Abraham Lincoln to accept African-American soldiers into the Union Army. In May 1865, Smalls sailed 2000 folks to a post-war victory party at Fort Sumter.
Riddick's Folly Holidays This play is a series of Christmas stories from the Civil War years, commissioned and performed in a stately 19th century mansion located in Suffolk, VA that served as both a Union headquarters and a prison. (currently unavailable)
Oprah Mcwintry “Oprah” interviews twenty-four historical figures including Madame C.J. Walker, Powhatan, Marquis de Lafayette, Susan B. Anthony, Garrett Morgan, Matthew Henson, Arthur Ashe, Rosa Parks, and Cowboy Nate Love. [Master puppeteer James Cooper has performed the script with a full cast of puppets he created]
JuneteenthVA: Historical Narratives An ongoing project of JuneteenthVA, the historical narratives tell key stories in the 400-year history of American slavery centered around Hampton Roads. The four listed below were produced by the former Collective Arts Theater and set a template for others to create similar narratives incorporated into the larger project:
Contrabands of War Late May 1861 saw one of the most significant acts of the Civil War, one that compels today’s public to preserve and make use of Fort Monroe. On that day in 1861, enslaved men Frank Baker, James Townsend, and Shepard Mallory escaped from their owner and rowed from Norfolk to Fort Monroe where they petitioned Lincoln’s general Benjamin Butler for their freedom. When a Confederate emissary arrived and demanded that Butler return his property, Butler concluded that if the men were property, then he had the right to confiscate them as “contrabands of war.” Thus, these three men – conscripted to the Union forces subsequent to their freedom -- became the first enslaved people to experience freedom. This bold move, made at the beginning of the Civil War and two years before the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation, put these three men on the path to American citizenship that was later completed with the passage of the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments to the United States Constitution by 1870.
Arrival at Hampton This clip tells the story of how slavery arrived on American soil when the first approximately 20 African slaves were sold at Pointe Comfort (now Fort Monroe), Virginia, in August of 1619.
The Underground Railroad Hampton Roads and the Dismal Swamp were key stops on the underground railroad.
Nat Turner The 1831 uprising of Nat Turner is seen by many as the true beginning of the Civil War.
DRAMAS
SUMMERS IN SUFFOLK: A SIX-PLAY CYCLE (1870-1992)
This six-play cycle unfolds the rich lives of four Tidewater families, with stories stretching from 1870 to 1992. Set in the Hampton Roads area in Southeastern Virginia, these tales go back about 125 years and include bits of folklore, ghost stories, autobiography, and research stitched into a story spanning over five generations.
Summer Storms, 1870 The war is over, and the slaves are legally free, but Cleo doesn't see much difference in her life. The "man up on the hill," as she refers to her former owner, is dying. Cleo urges her reluctant son, who was conceived when she was "owned" by that "man up on the hill," to hasten death's appearance or risk losing his inheritance once his "relatives" arrive.
Summer Shadows, 1896 Cleo's son Amos Clark, now in his 60s, is rich and as respected in Suffolk as the recently deceased Frederick Douglass. Amos has gone to Africa and returned with a young bride who continually escapes into the swamp to find peace in this strange place so far from her home.
A Summer Romance, 1930 From the roaring 20s to the Great Depression, Amos Clark's only child, the spoiled and headstrong Carrie Clark, returns home to bury her father, and in the process shakes up the old homestead with new ideas and open desires. (A Summer Romance and A Summer Memory received a workshop production at the 1991 Mark Taper Forum's New Playwrights Festival)
Summer Dreams, 1957 To deal with an old lover who broke her heart, a woman finds her way into a secret place in the swamp where a Conjure Woman cautions her that "Sometimes a wish is a curse in disguise." (film, 35 mins. Shot on location in Hampton Roads and the Great Dismal Swamp, 2003)
A Summer Memory, 1970 A successful Hollywood writer recalls her 14th summer spent in a backyard reading books and befriending the town's resident genius who helped spark her creative voice. (This play received rave reviews in The L.A. Weekly; and the UCLA Bruin; also produced by Virginia Beach Parks & Recreation)
Summer Solstice, 1992 Homecomings and departures mark beginnings and endings as the youngest and oldest generations of one family exchange the baton in this final chapter of Summers in Suffolk -- set in the last decade and final moments of the 20th century.
A Great & Dismal Swamp This play is set in the "Swamp of Despair," the Native American name for The Dismal Swamp. It is a place inhabited by talking animals, escaped convicts, white separatists, lost children, and the spirits of Harriet Tubman, Nat Turner, and George Washington reuniting in the spring season. Moving seamlessly from the past to the present -- back and forth between reality and surrealism -- this bold, comic adventure has been described by the playwright as Lion King on acid. (Commissioned by Old Dominion University, 1998) (currently unavailable)
Walking With A Panther This play tells the story of a once idealistic Black Panther and his first seven days home after 23 years in prison. (Winner: National Endowment for the Arts Playwrighting Fellowship, 1993)
All Kinds Of Blue This music- and dance-flavored play about Black women trying to break the cycle of drugs and despair follows Aretha Kinds as she gets out of prison and returns home to D.C. where her mother and daughter wait for her to fail once again. (Donald Davis Award at UCLA, 1981; Workshopped in California prison system, 1982; Screenplay optioned by Jasmine Guy, 1995, 1999) (currently unavailable)
Passing This adaptation of Nella Larsen’s Harlem Renaissance novel of the same title tells the intertwined tale of childhood girlfriends Clare and Irene who are light enough to pass as white. This wonderful roaring-1920s melodrama keeps the audience wondering about whether the two main characters are also lesbians “passing” as straight – some say that mysteries remain even after the drama ends. (Commissioned by Towne St. Theatre; producer and star Nancy -Cheryll Davis won NAACP "Best Actress" Award, 1997; Remounted on its 10th anniversary in 2007)
Southern Girls (co-written with Dura Temple-Curry) This play follows the lives of six women -- three Black, three White -- from the time they are little girls growing up in a small southern town into their early 40s. Set against the turbulent backdrop of American history from the 1950s through the 90s, Southern Girls was conceived by UCLA playwrighting classmates Bailey and Temple Curry, then they realized they were both southern girls – but though they have many of the same experiences growing up, their lives unfolded in parallel but separate worlds separated by race. Bailey who wrote the black key parts and Temple Curry wrote the white key parts. (Dramatic Publishing, 1995)
COMEDIES/MUSICALS
Dannie 'N Laurence This short film (also a series pilot) tells the tale of a love story of opposites, in which characters of all different backgrounds are forced to live together. It's hate at first sight between Dannie and Laurence, but as events pile up, the two main characters fall in love. Will that be enough to overcome the differences in their backgrounds? Welcome to a love story where happily ever after might not mean happily together. (film, 42 mins: Winner of Best New Playwright by Company of Angels in North Hollywood; Outstanding Screenplay Award from Writer's Workshop)
Murder & Mayhem In The Red River Bar This story kicks off with a murder in CJ Towner's bar. The detective assigned to the investigation is a long-ago lover still in the closet who is about to become a double grandma compliments of her son. Her son’s twin – a daughter -- is busy falling for the wrong kind of girl who also happens to be a bartender at CJ’s and one of the prime murder suspects. Toss in the return of a foul-mouthed, trailer park ex-husband, the ghost of the murder victim working to solve her own murder, and some funky beats, and CJ's place begins to rock. (Commissioned by Dark Horse Productions in 1985 and enjoyed a 6-month run at the Deja vu Coffeehouse in West Hollywood) (currently unavailable)
Rainbow (in development) With beautiful music and lyrics by Duke Rightious and book co-authored by Sheri Bailey, this story follows seven disparate people who have recently died. Each a rainbow color – but not connected in any way – the spirits must actually come together to form that magical phenomenon before their spirits can rest. As the story is told, if they fail to make a rainbow, then Earth will be denied rainbows for 1,000 years and their spirits will remain in limbo.
Stars Of Cavalier Manor This piece is a musical set in the Portsmouth, VA community where the streets are named after the rich and famous: (Lena) Horne Drive, (Harry) Belafonte Drive and (Franklin Delano) Roosevelt Blvd. (currently unavailable)