Overview
In 1839, Harriet Powell, a young, mixed-race, enslaved woman, slips away from a hotel in Syracuse, New York, and escapes from the white Southerner who owns her. With the aid of a worker at the hotel, a mysterious free black man named Thomas Leonard, Harriet finds temporary safe harbor in an attic room at the home of impassioned abolitionist Gerrit Smith. With the slave catchers in pursuit, Harriet spends the hours before her nighttime departure on the dangerous journey to Canada in the company of Smith’s young cousin Elizabeth Cady, an outspoken advocate for women’s equality. Confronted with new and difficult ideas about race, identity, and equality, and with confusion, fear, and desperation multiplying, Harriet is forced to the precipice of radical self-re-imagining and a reckoning with the heartrending cost of her freedom.
Casting & Production
Casting
HARRIET POWELL — Female, ¾ White, ¼ Black, 20-25
ELIZABETH CADY — Female, White, 20-30
GERRIT SMITH — Male, White, 40-50
THOMAS LEONARD — Male, Black, 30-40
Setting
Place
The third-floor former “servants’” quarters.
The estate of Gerrit Smith, Peterboro, New York
Time
October, 1839
