NAT TURNER IN JERUSALEM is as solemn as a vigil, deeply moving, soulfully acted and intimately experienced by this viewer. Actors’ Shakespeare Project presents this two-hander in collaboration with Hibernian Hall in Roxbury where it is staged. Brandon G. Green is a powerful Nat Turner –visionary? revolutionary? murderer? martyr? The play asks these questions of the preacher/slave who lead a slave rebellion in August 1831 and killed the families of white slave-owners. Turner was captured, tried, convicted and executed in Jerusalem(!) Va; his lawyer Thomas R. Gray (Lewis D. Wheeler, in a deft turn, also plays Turner’s jailer) recorded Nat Turner’s confessions. I have often wondered aloud, contemplating the barbarity of slavery and its aftermath, why we aren’t all murdered in our beds. This play takes that on. That the play is relevant now, is an understatement.
Read the entire post as it originally appeared on Joyce’s Choices Blog here.