Delana Flowers channels Sojourner’s truth, spirit
Actor Delana Flowers was surprised by how little she knew about Sojourner Truth.
She learned many facts about the powerful equal rights activist after she was cast to portray her in Richard LaMonte Pierce’s onewoman show “Sojourner” for Beechview-based theater company Prime Stage.
The famous memoirist’s first language was Dutch, not English. As a slave, she endured many hardships at the hands of a cruel family and didn’t know how to read or write. Yet her message of advancing Black Americans and women has continued to resonate.
“It made me realize that Sojourner Truth is a name that we know, and she’s part of history and a legend,” Flowers said. “But we don’t really know a whole lot outside of that. There’s no reason we shouldn’t be talking about her more and the impact that she had.”
The show began streaming online Feb. 12 and continues through Feb. 26 at primestage. Tickets are pay-what-you-can per household and start at $5.
Prime Stage will also host a live webinar with Sojourner Truth’s great-great-grandsons, Thomas and Cory Mcliechey, at 1 p.m. Sunday. There will be an opportunity for the public to submit questions during the conversation.
Flowers came to acting later than many, having not seen a show prior to a role as a senior in a high school musical, “Little Shop of Horrors.” She was “smitten.”
“I actually started out singing,” she said. “I grew up singing in church, and I was kind of an outcast. I wasn’t popular. But when I would sing, people would listen to me. That’s what drew me to performing. I felt like I was being heard.”
A native of Lancaster, Pa., she is the daughter of a pastor who came to Pittsburgh to lead a church. She had been laid off from her job when she accepted her father’s invitation to work at the church. She didn’t want to stay in her hometown.
“Lancaster is very small, which was why I knew I wouldn’t stay there,” she said. “[Pittsburgh] was a huge cultural difference. There was so much more to do and so much more to get involved in. There were several theaters to choose from. I started singing with several bands, singing at several churches.”
Flowers has performed with several local theater companies, including the Hiawatha Project, Front Porch Theatricals, Pittsburgh Musical Theater and Stage 62. She has also worked as a teaching artist to help pay the bills between gigs. Through teaching, she was able to learn from other faculty and students and experience musicals such as “The Color Purple.”
Since the pandemic, acting roles have been hard to come by.
But she has found some silver linings. The time off allowed her to sharpen her skills and take classes with an acting coach.
“Because we have to adapt often … I think it’s the artists and creatives that have thrived the most during this time,” Flowers said. “Because we are used to creative problem solving, and that’s what we had to do.”
Sojourner Truth’s work for justice is especially timely amid calls for racial equity in the wake of George Floyd’s death in police custody last year. When she escaped from slavery in New York, her name was Isabella Bomfree. Her calling as a traveling Christian preacher led her to changeher name.
As her travels brought her into contact with abolitionists and women’s rights advocates, her speeches became political as well as spiritual. Her most famous speech, “Ain’t I a Woman,” electrified the Ohio Women’s Rights Convention in 1851 and made her nationally known. She continued to advocate for equality during and after the Civil War.
“Sojourner” comes 25 years after Prime Stage’s first produced play, “A Woman Called Truth” by Sandra Fenichel Asher. Flowers said the spirit of Sojourner Truth shows the need to keep pressing on.
“A lot of those struggles are still happening. In a lot of ways, we’re still fighting for equality even among the sexes, not just racial.
“I think it’s sad that we’re still having these conversations. There’s some things I hear, and I’m like, ‘We’re still talking about that? That still has to be said?’ Unfortunately, the answer is yes.”
Portraying her reminded Flowers of the “strength and resilience” of her forebears, she said, especially her grandmother.
Director Linda Haston did not want to depict the historical figure as “decrepit and hunched over.” Flowers found photographs of Sojourner Truth and accounts from others remarking on her straight posture. She immediately thought of her grandmother Annie Flowers.
Seven years ago, Flowers had to watch as her grandmother, who was dying of a brain tumor, slowly lost independence and ability to speak.
“Even in the midst of all that, her body failing, right up until the day she died, her posture was always perfect,” Flowers said, “Just completely straight. Very dig-nified. Just this confident grace.”
She said she was dedicating her performance to her grandmother and channeling her, believing she was with her on “this journey.”
“I really feel like both Sojourner and my grandmother have given me great examples of what it means to stand in my power as a woman, as a Black woman, and to look adversity in the face with my shoulders squared and just hit it head on.
“I’m grateful for that legacy living on in me, and having the opportunity to share that legacy with the audience.”