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Dramatic Performance Highlights Slave Narratives

The powerful and moving testimonies of actual slaves from America’s past are brought to life during a professional dramatic performance at Alma College.

Actors Bernadette Drayton and Harlin C. Kearsley, using the slaves’ own words, step in and out of a number of diverse characters in VOICES: Those Who Wore The Shoe, a staged documentary presented at 8 p.m. Monday, Feb. 12 in the Remick Heritage Center, Presbyterian Hall.

The event is free and open to the public. No ticket is required.

The performance is based on interviews with thousands of former slaves that the Federal Writers’ Project, an offshoot of the Works Progress Administration, conducted and transcribed from 1934 through 1941.

The actors illustrate what it was like to be a slave through the words of those who experienced the “horrific reality of being physically owned by another human being,” said Kearsley, creator and director of the production. 

Kearsley’s adaptation of the interviews incorporates music, dance, archival photographs and narratives that engage the audience in an often-neglected part of history. 

“Much more than just a Black history program, this is a story of American history,” said Kearsley, who believes that the hopes, struggles and emotions that VOICES: Those Who Wore The Shoe dramatically recreates are “experiences that everyone can relate to regardless of race or religion.” 

Following the performance, there will be a question-and-answer discussion open to the audience. 

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Spring Term at Alma is a one-month immersion on a single academic topic that offers learning experiences not typically available during the more traditional 15-week fall and winter terms. For example, during Spring Term ‘07 students explored important cultural sites in China, worked to restore a Jewish Holocaust cemetery in Poland, analyzed ethic politics in Scotland, and studied medieval literature in London.

 

Student Profile

Brett Seymoure

Brett Seymoure
Graduation: 2009
Major: Biology
From: Paw Paw, Michigan
Interests: Sports, Politics

Alma’s close faculty-student interaction provides numerous benefits such as the ability to do undergraduate research on a graduate level. Alma’s professors treat students more as peers welcoming student input and collaboration on faculty projects. When students are involved in research, faculty aggressively pursue publication of findings including students as co-authors.