Overview
John Brown asks Harriet Tubman to fight with him to stop slavery. Her traumatic epilepsy triggered, Tubman moves through time to a modern Philadelphia prison. She meets Nelson Davis, who falls in love with her. He detains her from Harper’s Ferry; Furious, she returns to her time to mourn the failed raid. But when she’s recruited to lead the Union Army’s Combahee River Raid, she returns to the prison to recruit her spies. Davis goes back in time separately to fight Confederates and TB—and become her second husband.
Casting & Production
Casting
2F, 6M
Author's Notes
My General Tubman asks how Harriet Tubman gives and receives love. It uses the Black American aesthetic of call-and-response to answer in a way that privileges accessibility and connection above cleverness.
Underneath My General Tubman lays Henry V,a 19th-century African Americans’ fave, with all its hints and tricks. Harriet is royalty. The Chorus narrator helps audience members get their bearings. The fantastic setting and tender love story help us let go of an American cliché to envision Tubman’s transcendence over the obscene legacy of chattel slavery. Hers is love in action, love in the midst of hatred, in the midst of loss, love like armor to protect against the temptation to become less than or try to become more than human.
-Lorene Cary
