***Please see Heartbeat Ensemble’s website for more performance dates and times, information and tickets.
BY KYLE BASS
Directed by Vernice Miller
Featuring Vanessa R. Butler*, Robert Hannon Davis*, Olivia Nicole Hoffman*, Godfrey L. Simmons Jr.*
In 1839, Harriet Powell, a young, mixed-race, enslaved woman slips away from a hotel in Syracuse, New York, and escapes, finding temporary safe harbor in the home of impassioned abolitionist Gerrit Smith. With the slave catchers in pursuit, Harriet spends the hours before her nighttime escape to Canada in the company of Smith’s young cousin Elizabeth Cady, an outspoken advocate for women’s equality. As both women confront new and difficult ideas about race, identity, and equality, Harriet is forced to the precipice of a radical reckoning with the heartrending cost of freedom. Which wrenching choice will Harriet choose: Return to the relative safety of her master’s household, or risk everything by fleeing to Canada?
HartBeat Ensemble is the resident theater troupe at Immanuel’s Carriage House Theater at 360 Farmington Avenue next to the church. HartBeat is presenting Possessing Harriet October 6 - October 15th.
