The OHA commissioned play Possessing Harriet, from local playwright Kyle Bass, will be making its debut at the Franklin Stage Company in Franklin, NY this July. Find out more here.
Kyle Bass, writer of Possessing Harriet, discusses the play and its imminent production at the Franklin Stage Company.
Previously, the play had been chosen by Syracuse Stage for its world premiere during the 2018-2019 season and by Ithaca’s Kitchen Theatre, a professional equity theater, for its 2016 New Play Development Program at the Saltonstall Foundation for the Arts, as well as for a New York State Summer School of the Arts (NYSSSA) performance at SUNY Delhi.
You can learn more about the story behind the play in this article.
This inspirational chapter of our location history imagines a conversation between an enslaved woman, Harriet Powell, and a young Elizabeth Cady, the fierce advocate for women’s rights. The conversation takes place in an attic room in the Peterboro, New York, home of abolitionist Gerrit Smith as Harriet, having slipped away from a Syracuse hotel and the family who owns her, awaits her departure north on the Underground Railroad. This absorbing drama unfolds in real-time, as danger nears and Harriet must make a life-altering decision.