Thanksgiving Double Feature Breaks The Mold At Metropolitan Virtual Playhouse

The groundbreaking reading series continues as Obie Award winner Metropolitan Playhouse presents its next free "screened" readings, live-streamed at no charge, with talkback to follow: AUNT BETSY'S THANKSGIVING, by Katherine Davis Chapman Tillman and THE DOWNFALL OF JUSTICE, AND THE FARMER JUST RETURNED FROM MEETING ON THANKSGIVING DAY, by an unknown author.

The video will be available starting November 28 and will be available to stream through December 2 on the Playhouse webpage, the Metropolitan Playhouse YouTube channel, and the Metropolitan Playhouse Facebook page. For more information visit www.metropolitanplayhouse.org.

In Kate Tillman's bittersweet play of hope and accommodation, it is 1914, and the destitute Aunt Betsy and her granddaughter discover just before Thanksgiving that the property they have called home for 15 years has been sold. The white family that owns the land sends a contrite lawyer to explain, but there is one secret that may turn the tide.

In the Colonial satire, a well-off farmer and his family gather for Thanksgiving meal. They have just come from a chastening sermon--clearly one that has fallen on deaf ears as they struggle to remember the words and disregard the message. The only member of the household who understands and speaks up is the enslaved Jack, whose observations are not well received.

Discussion including audience participation follow the readings, with special guests Michael Dinwiddie, Playwright and Associate Professor at NYU, and Timothy H. Breen, historian at the University of Vermont.

Aunt Betsy's Thanksgiving is directed by Linda Kuriloff and features Marie Louise Guinier, SJ Hannah, Michael Hardart, Lauren Marissa Smith, and Lily Santiago. The Downfall of Freedom is directed by Alex Roe and features Ken Ferrigni, Regina Gibson, SJ Hannah, Melissa Hurst, Jon Lonoff, Ron Moreno, and Erin Leigh Schmoyer.

Katherine Davis Chapman Tillman (1870 - 1923) was a missionary and author whose short stories, poetry, essays, and plays, appeared in The Christian Reporter, American Baptist, and the nationally distributed A. M. E. Church Review. Her novellas included Beryl Weston's Ambition: The Story of an Afro-American Girl's Life (1893) and Clancy Street, serialized from 1898-1899. Historical plays included Thirty Years of Freedom (1902) and Fifty Years of Freedom (1910).

The Downfall of Freedom was published, anonymously, by Massachusetts printer Ezekial Russell, capturing a spirit of misgiving and tension during the American Revolution among a population uneasy with the evolving morality of the nation to be.

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