The Morning Journal (Lorain, OH)
Lorain author’s new play debuts
Evening before writers conference
A writer who sounded the call for freedom from slavery and for women’s rights comes to life again in a new work for the stage.
“Bound Together: One Great Bundle of Humanity” is a dramatization about author Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, who was born in 1825 to freed African American parents.
The play was written by Lorain author Kelly Boyer Sagert. It will have its Lorain County debut on April 6 as a prelude to the sixth annual Northeast Ohio Christian Writer’s Conference in Amherst.
Harper’s education was guided by an uncle who was an Abolitionist. She grew up to become a supporter of the Underground Railroad and women’s suffrage.
A prolific author, Harper became known as the mother of African Amer- ican journalism for her works for Abolitionist newspapers. She was the first African American to publish a short story in the United States, according to her official biography at the Poetry Foundation.
Oberlin writer and actress Debra Rose will portray Harper and Elyria actress Judy MacKeigan will play Hannah, the fictional nurse caring for Harper.
Before the play came together, Sagert and Rose said they had never heard of Harper.
Rose leads Poetic Expressions from the Heart, a writers group for those expressing their thoughts in verse. At their July 2017 meeting, the members were to read poetry with the theme of independence.
On the meeting day, Sagert said she had no fresh poetry of her own, so she wanted to bring a poem from a black woman of the Civil Rights era. The prospect seemed unlikely, she said.
“I thought, they would not have even published something of a black woman in that era,” Sagert said.
But she found one by Harper, with a short biography of the author attached. Sagert brought it to share with the group.
“So I get up and say, I like this poem but what I really want to do is write a play and have Debra Rose star in it,” Sagert said.
“And so I said, ‘I’m in,’” Rose said, expecting the script to come together over a year or so. MacKeigan also stepped forward to perform.
Sagert admitted when she declared her intention, she was not sure how the project would come together, even though she had a cast for a play that did not yet exist.
The same night, Sagert received notice she was selected for an online drama writing workshop through the University of Iowa. The course emphasized play writing for social justice, a
perfect match for Harper as a lead character.
Sagert knew from the start the other character would be a fictional nurse. The play developed from there.
“Three months later, she had a script finished. I’m like, what?” Rose said. “From there we went into rehearsals. We basically did everything ourselves, all the props and costumes and those kinds of things.”
“This more than any play that I’ve ever written, just kind of happened,” Sagert said. “Whatever it is that we needed to know, all of a sudden, it was there. So it was really a nice process because often … that’s not how writing goes all the time.”
A call to action
The play is a fictional encounter between Harper and Hannah, a nurse hired to care for her. It is set in 1909 in Harper’s Philadelphia home, when she is 84 and Hannah is 67.
The women get snowed in. They talk, end up learning about each other and being surprised, Rose said.
Harper was an accomplished author and her works became much of the basis for the dialogue. Sagert deliberately flipped the stereotypes of the characters because Harper is educated and Hannah is not.
Literature, television and movies often depict black people as helpless and white people as rescuers bringing them out of dependence or ignorance, if not savagery, Rose said.
“And this shows that that is not always the case,” Rose said. She added she and MacKeigan, with Director Dave MacKeigan, who also is Judy’s husband, all have discovered nuances of the characters and dialogue in the rehearsals.
In January, Rose and MacKeigan performed the play at John Knox Presbyterian Church in North Olmsted. The audience described it as more than a play.
“One of the comments after our performance was that this wasn’t a performance, it was a call to action,” Rose said. “I just love that they said that.”
The poetry group and other activities are meant to bring people together, including people from diverse backgrounds and with different points of view, Rose said.
Institutionalized slavery no longer exists, Sagert said, but the characters of “Bound Together” must deal with issues still present today. Rose agreed.
“We as performers, writers, we always want to leave people with something to think about,” Rose said. “We want to leave them changed in some way.”