The Oscar-winning movie 12 Years a Slave introduced millions to the story of Solomon Northup, a free black man whose long-obscure account of abduction, enslavement and eventual escape affected 21st-century moviegoers deeply. Now theatergoers and music lovers alike can get a taste of Northup's epic ordeal, and his literary accomplishment, on stage in a building that predates his birth by almost a century.
The performance work Exodus: Dreams of the Promised Land in Antebellum America features the distinguished a capella chorus known as the Western Wind Vocal Ensemble and includes some of Northup's writings, along with those of Frederick Douglass, abolitionist and women's suffrage pioneer Angelina Grimké and anonymous slave narratives.
Hosting this unusual show is Manhattan's oldest surviving structure, New York City's historic Fraunces Tavern--a tavern, restaurant and museum in a nearly 300-year-old downtown building. And lest you wonder why such a show makes sense so far north of the Mason-Dixon line, recall that New York State didn't outlaw slavery until 1827 (more than a century after the building at 54 Pearl St. went up).
Exodus also features award-winning actor Reg E. Cathey (House of Cards), Broadway veteran Rosalyn Coleman Williams (The Mountaintop, The Piano Lesson) and Jennifer Rau, while Western Wind performs Shaker hymns, early African-American spirituals and works by noted American composers William Billings (1746-1800), Abraham Wood (1752-1804), Stephen Jenks (1772-1856) and Mathilda T. Durham, the first known American female composer.
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