Stage Notes: Southern Promises

Provocateur playwright Thomas Bradshaw does not let anyone walk easily out of his plays. If you come to see one of his shows, you will be shaken up. You may not like what you see and hear, but often you will find yourself laughing heartily one second, and feeling horrible the next. His plays move very fast, and in their action, dialogue and crises often (like his 2005 play Prophet) resemble a good film noir. I spoke with Bradshaw, who I always enjoy talking with.

Hi Thomas. Talk to me.
Southern Promises is essentially a slave narrative. I was inspired, to some degree, by a book called The Great Escapes, which are slave narratives. I’ve read a lot of them and created my own using the real ones as source material.

So it’s based on real-life material?
A lot of the play is true, and the rest is made up, but in a very plausible way. It’s stuff that happened, I’m sure, but I didn’t actually read it.

What’s the time frame?
The play takes place in Louisiana County, Virginia in 1848 on a small plantation. Part of the story follows the story of Henry “Box” Brown on some level.

What was his story?
In order to escape slavery, he nailed himself into a 3 x 4 foot box and mailed himself North.

But this isn’t the play’s story, is it?
The play begins with the slave master dying of tuberculosis. He decides to will his slaves free on his deathbed. However, his wife is totally against it. And there is one house slave who comes to see him on his deathbed, and as he’s walking out the door, the wife says, “Don’t tell any of the other niggers about this.” So the husband dies and the wife says to the house slave, “You haven’t told anybody, have you?”

So she has the run of the plantation and she decides she is going to sell the slaves and move to New York to live with her brother. However, her husband’s brother, who knew of his brother’s will, asks, “How will you free the slaves?” She tells him, “The slaves are better off here than the poor free whites up north. They need us to take care of them.” Eventually, she is forced to marry her husband’s brother to protect the value of the plantation. She marries him under the condition that he doesn’t talk about abolitionism, or try to force her to free their slaves. Then we watch him being corrupted by the institution [of slavery] and he becomes master of the plantation.

How many are in the cast?
Eight -- Jeff Biehl plays the husband’s brother, who marries the wife and becomes the master of the plantation. Lia Aprile plays the wife.

I love Jeff Biehl. He’s a terrific actor. Anything more you want to add?
This is very different from other slave narratives that are out there in the world today. I wanted a much truer account of what slavery is like. I didn’t want to demonize anybody. Always, in these narratives, black people are noble martyrs, and white people are evil people taking advantage of a whole race of people. That’s not what I do in this play. Here, the white people are very charming, and they’re living their lives to the best of their ability, within the confines of their life.

I started thinking: Everyone agrees, “Slavery is bad.” It’s easy to look back from a modern perspective and say, “Those were evil people.” But, if you look around the world today, it says something about human nature. Slavery lasted for 400 years, and now there are still forms of slavery and genocide. So there’s clearly something in human nature which allows humans to do this. So that’s more the point of view of the play. Because the question was, why write another play about slavery? Well, this one is different. There’s no judgment. Like in all my other plays, I’m presenting it without comment.

P.S. 122, 150 First Ave., (212) 352-3101. Sept. 6-27. Tues.-Sat., 8:30 p.m.; Sun. & Mon., p.m. $10-$18.

Photo by Yi Zhao