On the streets of Colonial Williamsburg — one of the world’s premier living-history museums — Emily James cuts a formidable figure. Portraying Edith Cumbo, a free woman of color who walked these byways in the 18th century, James tries daily to convey to tourists the humiliations and contradictions Cumbo lived with.
“I’m restricted,” she explains to a group of mask-wearing visitors on a walking tour one late-April morning. “Because the laws didn’t say ‘free’ or ‘enslaved.’ They said ‘Negroes.’ ”
James has been embodying Cumbo in this mile-by-half-mile historic area for a decade, in a career in “actor interpretation” spanning 34 years. Though she has always loved the work, it has taken on deeper resonance of late. Colonial Williamsburg — a place where theater lives, too — has been grappling with more determination than ever with the harsher realities of its past. And particularly with the lives of its Black inhabitants, most of whom were enslaved and formed the majority of its population in the 1700s.
It is through performance of various kinds that this bastion of history is seeking to raise awareness of Williamsburg’s legacy, one far more diverse than visitors heard about in the early days of the historic restoration, opened in 1937. The instruction has gone out lately to all of Colonial Williamsburg’s dozens of actor-interpreters that the city’s slaveholding past is to figure in every tour and talk. The sense that the rosy vision of hard-working artisans and horsemen in period garb requires more context pervades this extraordinary pocket of history.
“We’ve shifted in how we think of things,” said Beth Kelly, Colonial Williamsburg’s vice president of education, research and historical interpretation. “Our research was always done with an Anglican-European point of view. Everything is grounded now in the 18th century — and the truth.”
To a degree astonishing to a visitor whose decades-old memories of Williamsburg run to aproned staffers churning butter, this center of Colonial exhibition uses the tools of the arts to convey that truth. The coronavirus forced the closing in April 2020 of the site and its 604 structures, 88 of them original. It reopened in June with safety protocols that are still in place: I wore a mask as required on all tours, for instance, and sat apart from others at public talks and performances. (The rules, oddly enough, can’t be enforced on the pedestrian-only streets running through the Colonial area because they come under the city’s jurisdiction; the site and its 1,800 employees are under the auspices of the nonprofit Colonial Williamsburg Foundation.)
[Michael Ruane reports on an archaeological dig at the site of a historic Black church in Colonial Williamsburg]
But even with the workarounds, theater of one sort or another is happening everywhere you look. Over there on the Charlton Stage, under a canopy of trees, Katharine Pittman is dressed in Martha Washington’s finery, recounting the first first lady’s first marriage, in Williamsburg. Across the way in the Hennage Auditorium, Kurt Smith is portraying Thomas Jefferson and Robert Weathers assorted other characters, from Jefferson’s father to philosopher John Locke, in “Pursuing Happiness,” a 30-minute play about the writing of the Declaration of Independence.
And in the middle of town, on the Play House Stage — which sits on the remnants of what is believed to be the first theater of Colonial America — members of the resident Jug Broke Theater Company are performing “Ladies of Llangollen.” Claire Wittman’s drama, which includes new lyrics to 18th-century songs, is the first in the foundation’s history to feature a romance between women.
“Your happiness is my only aim,” Wittman’s Eleanor says to her fellow poet and lover, Sarah, played by Alyssa Elkins. “I don’t want a husband,” Sarah replies. “I want you.”
Think about it: In the midst of contemporary reckonings about the rights of women and people of color, Williamsburg is giving guests — who number about 550,000 in a normal year — the historical backstories. It’s quite daring, and not everyone who attends seems to like it: The half-hour “Ladies of Llangollen” was as discreet as an afternoon tea party, but at least one family in attendance seemed to take umbrage. The instant the characters spoke of their mutual affection, the family sprang from their bench in the socially distanced outdoor playhouse and walked out.
Many more of the 50 or so spectators, though, appeared to appreciate the play, giving its quartet of actors a hearty ovation. “I came many, many times as a child,” said Theta Miller, visiting from Lynchburg, Va., with another theatergoer, Mike Tabony. “The last five years, there has been so much glorious interpretation like this.”
After the show, Wittman, Elkins and the other actors, Patrick Rooney and Rachel Eiland-Hall, talked about the opportunity to explore new content theatrically and experiencing audiences’ differing responses. As with so many subjects dramatized here, the roots of “Ladies of Llangollen” were in research. (Eleanor Butler and Sarah Ponsonby lived together in Britain in the late 18th century.)
“It seemed to me very clear in how they wrote about each other that they were married,” Wittman said.
[At 63, she enrolled at the college that sold her enslaved ancestors. Now she’s written a play about them.]
“I’m restricted,” she explains to a group of mask-wearing visitors on a walking tour one late-April morning. “Because the laws didn’t say ‘free’ or ‘enslaved.’ They said ‘Negroes.’ ”
James has been embodying Cumbo in this mile-by-half-mile historic area for a decade, in a career in “actor interpretation” spanning 34 years. Though she has always loved the work, it has taken on deeper resonance of late. Colonial Williamsburg — a place where theater lives, too — has been grappling with more determination than ever with the harsher realities of its past. And particularly with the lives of its Black inhabitants, most of whom were enslaved and formed the majority of its population in the 1700s.
It is through performance of various kinds that this bastion of history is seeking to raise awareness of Williamsburg’s legacy, one far more diverse than visitors heard about in the early days of the historic restoration, opened in 1937. The instruction has gone out lately to all of Colonial Williamsburg’s dozens of actor-interpreters that the city’s slaveholding past is to figure in every tour and talk. The sense that the rosy vision of hard-working artisans and horsemen in period garb requires more context pervades this extraordinary pocket of history.
“We’ve shifted in how we think of things,” said Beth Kelly, Colonial Williamsburg’s vice president of education, research and historical interpretation. “Our research was always done with an Anglican-European point of view. Everything is grounded now in the 18th century — and the truth.”
To a degree astonishing to a visitor whose decades-old memories of Williamsburg run to aproned staffers churning butter, this center of Colonial exhibition uses the tools of the arts to convey that truth. The coronavirus forced the closing in April 2020 of the site and its 604 structures, 88 of them original. It reopened in June with safety protocols that are still in place: I wore a mask as required on all tours, for instance, and sat apart from others at public talks and performances. (The rules, oddly enough, can’t be enforced on the pedestrian-only streets running through the Colonial area because they come under the city’s jurisdiction; the site and its 1,800 employees are under the auspices of the nonprofit Colonial Williamsburg Foundation.)
[Michael Ruane reports on an archaeological dig at the site of a historic Black church in Colonial Williamsburg]
But even with the workarounds, theater of one sort or another is happening everywhere you look. Over there on the Charlton Stage, under a canopy of trees, Katharine Pittman is dressed in Martha Washington’s finery, recounting the first first lady’s first marriage, in Williamsburg. Across the way in the Hennage Auditorium, Kurt Smith is portraying Thomas Jefferson and Robert Weathers assorted other characters, from Jefferson’s father to philosopher John Locke, in “Pursuing Happiness,” a 30-minute play about the writing of the Declaration of Independence.
And in the middle of town, on the Play House Stage — which sits on the remnants of what is believed to be the first theater of Colonial America — members of the resident Jug Broke Theater Company are performing “Ladies of Llangollen.” Claire Wittman’s drama, which includes new lyrics to 18th-century songs, is the first in the foundation’s history to feature a romance between women.
“Your happiness is my only aim,” Wittman’s Eleanor says to her fellow poet and lover, Sarah, played by Alyssa Elkins. “I don’t want a husband,” Sarah replies. “I want you.”
Think about it: In the midst of contemporary reckonings about the rights of women and people of color, Williamsburg is giving guests — who number about 550,000 in a normal year — the historical backstories. It’s quite daring, and not everyone who attends seems to like it: The half-hour “Ladies of Llangollen” was as discreet as an afternoon tea party, but at least one family in attendance seemed to take umbrage. The instant the characters spoke of their mutual affection, the family sprang from their bench in the socially distanced outdoor playhouse and walked out.
Many more of the 50 or so spectators, though, appeared to appreciate the play, giving its quartet of actors a hearty ovation. “I came many, many times as a child,” said Theta Miller, visiting from Lynchburg, Va., with another theatergoer, Mike Tabony. “The last five years, there has been so much glorious interpretation like this.”
After the show, Wittman, Elkins and the other actors, Patrick Rooney and Rachel Eiland-Hall, talked about the opportunity to explore new content theatrically and experiencing audiences’ differing responses. As with so many subjects dramatized here, the roots of “Ladies of Llangollen” were in research. (Eleanor Butler and Sarah Ponsonby lived together in Britain in the late 18th century.)
“It seemed to me very clear in how they wrote about each other that they were married,” Wittman said.
[At 63, she enrolled at the college that sold her enslaved ancestors. Now she’s written a play about them.]