ABOUT THE SHOW
Originally commissioned by Yale Repertory Theatre, and a former recipient of Cleveland Playhouse's Roe Green New Play Award, Little Row Boat tells the story of Sally Hemings, her bother James Hemings, and their relationship while enslaved by Thomas Jefferson, third president of the United States of America.
Little Row Boat was scheduled to be produced for the first time as a thesis at the School of Theatre at Boston University, directed by MFA Directing Candidate Adam Kassim, but was cancelled as a full production due to the COVID-19 global crisis. However, the team of student designers and actors, led by Adam and 2020 BFA Candidate Graceson Abreu Nunez as dramaturg, and supported by BU's SOT faculty have persevered, and created a vibrant space for new play development--our nightly zoom rehearsals have lifted my artistic spirits at a time that is more often than not overtly challenging and emotionally bleak. In truth, one of the aspects of this experience that is most wrenching is that others will not be able to experience the beautiful work of the design team and the masterful vision of Adam, who has brought sensitivity and warmth to this rehearsal room and this play.
A NOTE FROM THE DIRECTOR
On behalf of the entire team, it’s my honor to welcome you to our virtual display for Kirsten Greenidge’s Little Row Boat; Or, Conjecture. This website serves as a companion piece to our online reading of the play on Friday, April 24th at 4pm via Zoom. Please peruse our dramaturgy, explore our designs, and imagine our production as it would have been were we able to gather in person and share it with you.
It was a little over a year ago when I accosted Kirsten in the halls of BU School of Theatre, professed my love for her, and asked if there might be an opportunity for us to collaborate on a project she wanted to develop. Unfailingly generous, Kirsten said yes and sent me the script for Little Row Boat. I knew immediately that this was a special and important play – challenging and poetic and full of contradictions and questions, shining a light on voices overlooked and silenced by our nation’s history of enslavement and the sacrifices those individuals made in pursuit of freedom. I jumped at the chance to help Kirsten bring this story to life.
Little Row Boat; Or Conjecture began design meetings in November 2019, with a cast in place in January 2020 and rehearsals set to start in mid-March. However, like so many artistic processes around the country, ours was cancelled due to the necessary measures put in place to deter the spread of COVID-19.
BUT, it did not feel right to drop all the work our team has already put into the project. We had a company of actors, a committed design team, a script, a great dramaturg, a willing playwright, ways to connect, and time. Could we seize this opportunity to refocus our efforts and help Kirsten continue development on her play? The answer was a resounding yes! While heartbroken that we could not fully produce Little Row Boat, we did have the ability to contribute in a small, but meaningful way to this powerful story.
The entire team has engaged in this new journey with conviction and curiosity. They have continued to delve deeply into the material, offer insights and ask questions that have pushed the project along. And Kirsten has refined and tightened her already wonderful play into something quite remarkable. I am so incredibly privileged to have been given the chance to collaborate with this group of resilient artists and thankful for all their efforts.
We know that Kirsten’s play must have a life beyond our process and look forward to sharing in its success. Until then, please join us in our investigation of Little Row Boat; Or, Conjecture.
-Adam Kassim
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A NOTE FROM THE PLAYWRIGHT
Working on LITTLE ROW BOAT has been pure and absolute joy. When Adam approached me about this collaboration for his thesis, my first pangs of worry were about the rewriting process. How to re-enter this world in a way that not only honors the process of new work, but also that honors the history and legacy of Sally Hemings, the enslaved woman with whom Thomas Jefferson had multiple children, but never legally freed, even upon his death (nor did he free nearly any of the seven hundred enslaved people who labored for him during his lifetime. Further, how to acknowledge honor due, while also allowing these characters to live and breathe as they maybe had when they were most themselves two centuries ago?
Fortunately, Adam is brilliantly adept at fostering space for new work to take seed and grow. Over the next several months, Adam and I conversed not only about the play’s text, but also about the images and ideas teeming within it. Through text messages containing poetry (Walt Whitman), google docs of art exhibits and installations (lots of Kara Walker), and trips to Charlottesville (namely Monticello, the plantation Jefferson called home), Adam and I began building the world of the play as I reinvestigated the characters of Sally, her brother James, and those intertwined in their lives during their time in France and in the years that followed. The space Adam built for all of us—designers, creative team, and cast—to explore these ideas and images was rigorous and generous, and as we approached our first rehearsals, I felt the play was finally getting the chance to articulate itself fully.
Whatever that particular articulation might have been, it was not meant to flower. However, I have delighted, even in this historical moment when so much is uncertain and so much news is bleak, in what Adam and this production team and cast have created given the tools we still have that allow us to practice our craft. Now, more than ever, I am reminded that a theatre-maker’s essential job is to tell a story. And it has always been the story of Sally Hemings; her family; their circumstances; their emotional tethers to one of our founding fathers who championed liberty and freedom for many, but could not and would not grant it to those he held near.
At its center, this story seeks to reveal Sally and James and those they lived amongst, as human beings, with motivations that are complex and confused; understandable and inconceivable. It is this center around which LITTLE ROW BOAT revolves and it is this center than Adam and this entire production team have nurtured in our time together as artists.
I’m excited to share our work with you, but even more, I am eager to bring you into the folds of this process that has an extreme gift. Over the last few weeks, during our nightly zooms, I have been able to reexamine this play and its center. At the same time, the act of working on it has reaffirmed why I choose to reveal and to question through storytelling; in these difficult times, it is the coming together to air, to weep, to shout, to whisper, that makes us all remember why we fight so hard to live.
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-Kirsten Greenidge