Smith's earnest, girlish Ona grew, sadly, to become a beaten-down woman accepting life's harsh realities. From a young girl crushing on a man she meets at the market, trying to figure out how to see him again and send him a gift, Ona develops as she is forced to face the realities of living as a slave. ![]() Smith's reading was brilliant and heartbreaking, honoring the memory of the real Ona Judge. Chiola effectively delivered Betsey's vicious, antagonistic treatment of Ona, fleshing Betsey out into a full-on villain. Betsey represents a younger, more entitled generation, cynically piecing together Ona's escape and assuming the worst of her, while Martha displays more naiveté. Rowland's acting opposite Emily Chiola's portrayal of Martha's granddaughter, Betsey Custis, was especially effective. Martha insists that she has been treating Ona "like a daughter," even as she muses that the slaves "wouldn't know what to do with freedom" if they were granted it. There was a harsh disconnect between Martha's matriarchal compassion and the treatment of her slaves. Rowland was alternately blasé and matter-of-fact, perfectly portraying the status quo of the time: slavery was a reality that many people never questioned and genuinely believed was better for society. Martha Washington (played by Mary Rowland) and Quaker abolitionist Dolley Todd (played by Kelly McDaniel) chat about the impending French Revolution and slave rebellions as if they are theoretical, faraway threats, while slaves Hercules Posey (Evit Emerson) and Ona Judge (Sierra Smith) listen, horrified, from the kitchen. Sometimes mundane, sometimes emotionally charged, these conversations brought together different combinations of White and Black characters to unsettlingly powerful effect. I was shocked to hear that Martha Washington had independently owned 80 to 150 slaves, and Ona's experiences make an amazing, horrifying story.īurridge, a retired UNC cell biologist and established playwright, based most of the play on historical accounts, utilizing biographies including Erica Armstrong Dunbar's Never Caught and Marie Jenkins Schwartz's Ties that Bound: Founding First Ladies and Slaves.Ī cast of nine read from a row on stage, standing to deliver short vignettes that related both historical and narrative events in short conversations. ![]() ![]() The irony, of course, is the idealism of America's Founding Fathers, contrasted with the reality that many of them continued to buy and sell other human beings for a large part of the history of the country they sought to liberate from British rule. As part of its Staged: New Play Readings series, OdysseyStage presented a reading of Keith Burridge's new play, Ona, a historically-derived work based on the life of Ona Judge, one of very few slaves known to have escaped from the household of Martha Washington.
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