Seen on: Friday, 3/06/26.
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| Jade Cayne as Bell. Photo by Rainer DeLalio. |
Plot and Background
The Real Artists LLC presents Karin Abarbanel's new play about legendary activist Sojourner Truth. An adult Truth looks back on her youth, when she was newly emancipated from enslavement and fighting in court to rescue and liberate her son Peter, who was illegally sold across state lines from New York to Alabama.Thoughts:
Over an empty stage, a man and a woman stand on mirrored balconies running the perimeter of the space, trilling a birdsong and waving their arms, gently flying. As this prologue, a gentle dream of escape and freedom, gives way, Sojourner Truth walks onstage. Bonneted and white shawled, she tells us the story, not of how she became renowned activist and speaker, but of how she accomplished another unusual task: she was one of the first Black woman to win a case against a white man of an enslaved person being sold illegally across state lines. She introduces her younger self, a woman named Bell (played by Jade Cayne with a sweet vulnerability that transforms over the course of the story into a spine of steel and a unswerving sense of self). What follows is a mix of narration by the elder Truth (a stentorian Desi Waters) that lends itself easily into crowd-speaking as she stands behind a podium), re-enactment of Bell's struggle, and that liminal space where Truth and Bell both wrestle with her betrayal of her son, a lingering question of whether forgiveness is ever possible.
That narrative mix, however, doesn't always yield dramatically engaging work. The spaces between moments drift too aimlessly, when they should be overlapping and overflowing, the memories cresting up against the one remembering, a summoning with only a word rather than a pause. BB Props has given us a nearly blank canvas of a space, backed by Scott Fetterman's projections. Why should the performance not then reflect that fluidity? The piece is also butting up against the challenge facing many biographical works: it's not just about telling what happened; it's about crafting what happened into a story. Abarbanel's work has the potential to reach this, but right now it feels more like a series of dioramas rather that something cohesive. We need an arc not just for Bell, but for Truth as well. What does reliving this period of her life do to her now? The moments when both versions of Truth join forces, exerting her spirit both as young Bell and as a woman looking back, are thrilling, and I think tapping into this energy more, engaging with the ways memory bleed into reality, could strengthen the work here.
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Running: Now playing at Shiner Theater at the Sheen Center for Thought & Culture (The Real Artists LLC) - Opening: March 5, 2026. Closing: March 29, 2026.
Category: play
Length: 1 hour, 30 minutes, no intermission.
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| Desi Waters as Sojourner Truth and Jade Cayne as Bell. Photo by Rainer DeLalio. |
Creative Team
Playwright: Karin Abarbanel
Director: Rhonda PASSION Hansome
Designers/Team: The Real Artists LLC (Emani Brielle Simpson) (Producer), Delfina Barbiero (Assistant Producer), Emiliano Pares, BB props (Set and Props), Mary Blackburn (Costume), Scott Fetterman (Projections), Ethan Fox (General Manager), Tiffany Medina/Microdose Method (Website), Leta Marcellus (Marketing), Paul Siebold/Off Off PR (Public Relations).
Cast: Desi Waters, Jade Cayne, Eliott Johnson, Eric Ruffin, Jeanna Schweppe, Marc McCullough Thomas, Nicholas Louis Turturro, O'Wayne Dalhouse, Garrett Lee Hendricks, Nadel Henville, Megan Lomax, Jeff Prewitt, Hunter Rothstein, Emily Sullivan.
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