Abolitionist/orator Frederick Douglass, circus impresario P.T. Barnum and other historic figures come to life tomorrow morning in a song-filled play in Dudley Square.
The Revels Repertory, the touring ensemble of Revels, Inc. which presents the Christmas Revels at Sanders Theatre in Cambridge, returns to the Roxbury Center for the Arts at Hibernian Hall with a show that organizers say garnered the troupe “our most diverse audience ever” when they first performed it there.
“There’s A Meeting Here Tonight” is an original musical theatre production about the Hutchinson Family Singers, America’s first traveling singing ensemble. The performance is a costumed recreation of a Hutchinson Family reunion after the Civil War where family members have gathered at the homestead in Milford, NH to celebrate their travels and experiences.
The Hutchinsons were famous for their songs “Old Granite State” and “Get off the Track,” a rousing anti-slavery anthem. The program will illustrate how activists approached the hot button issues of the day through music, including spiritual songs, songs about emancipation, women’s suffrage and the Civil War, spiritual songs and songs by popular composers such as Stephen Foster.
Some of the family members moved to Lynn, Massachusetts in 1841 and set up a store right down the street from Frederick Douglass, a recently freed slave who became one of the leading voices in the Abolitionist movement and who inspired the Hutchinsons to join him in that cause. Douglass is also invited to the reunion where he recreates one of his famous anti-slavery speeches (originally given at Boston’s Tremont Temple), sings spirituals and camp meeting songs with the family.
Frederick Douglass is portrayed by the well-known Milton Wright, former First Justice of the Roxbury District Court and a longtime soloist in “Black Nativity.” Wright will be singing “No More Auction Block” and the familiar spiritual “Let My People Go!” which the audience is invited to join in on Revels style.
Douglass/Wright also teaches Georgia South Sea Island singing games to the children. Youngsters affiliated with Roxbury’s Eliot Church will demonstrate the song games like “Little Johnny Brown” and “All Hid.”
Although originally scheduled as a school performance, tomorrow’s 11 a.m. show is open to the public. This event is appropriate for adults and children in grades 3-8.
