In the summer of 2002, History Theatre artistic director Ron Peluso invited a reporter to peek in on the early stages of a play about former slaves who had come upriver from Missouri to form Pilgrim Baptist Church in St. Paul.
"This is what we do," Peluso said after he and playwright Brian Grandison had talked for an hour about the history of slavery and the prominence of Pilgrim Baptist in St. Paul's Rondo neighborhood.
Two years later, "Adrift on the Mississippi" was read at History Theatre's play-reading series. It was read again in 2005, a sign that the piece was about to get caught in development hell -- a never-ending series of workshops capable of devouring a play before it ever gets a full production. When History Theatre put another reading on the 2009 slate, I had lost interest.
But behold: Nine years after those first discussions, "Adrift on the Mississippi" will premiere in a History Theatre production in E.M. Pearson Theatre at Concordia University, just about a mile from Pilgrim Baptist. James Williams is directing and Gavin Lawrence is featured as the Rev. Robert Hickman, who led the former slaves from Missouri to Minnesota. The cast includes Yolande Bruce of "Moore by Four" renown.
Grandison -- who writes, teaches, directs and acts in theater and film -- smiled recently, recalling how long he has been living with this play.
"I think it was in the Carter administration," he said.
"I had the actor's nightmare," Grandison went on, referencing that dream when an actor is onstage for a play that he hasn't even looked at. "But I was standing in front of Pilgrim Church and they were asking who I was, what I knew and why I thought I could tell their story. And I couldn't defend myself."
Looking for Hickman's voice
Peluso could see that Grandison had done his research when he brought in early drafts of the play.
He found three descendants of Robert Hickman, the church's founder: Mabel Hickman Harper, a granddaughter; Mabel's daughter, Julie Haggerty, and Julie's cousin, Sharon Harper. He also has become something of an expert on mid-19th-century Missouri history.
Populated by many slave owners, Missouri was officially part of the Union. This caused a civil war within the Civil War, with the famous Bushwhackers and Jayhawkers (from neighboring Kansas) terrorizing citizens on each side.
"The war was very personal in Missouri, and I could see why these slaves would want to crawl onto a piece of wood and get out in the river," Grandison said.
So they did in 1862 -- which is the year mentioned in Rev. Hickman's obituary as the founding of the church.
"For me, the church was formed on the river," Grandison said. "They formed a bond there."
As impressed as he was by all this history, Peluso wanted to hear Rev. Hickman's voice in Grandison's play. At that point, this key figure was just one of many characters on the raft.
With no record of Hickman's writing as source material, Grandison wondered how he could presume to speak for a man "who is up in stained glass as the founder of the church."
Peluso finally pushed him ("It's time to take a leap," he said), and Grandison let himself hear the character speaking in his head.
End of a long journey
In November 2009, History Theatre actors read the play for church leaders at Pilgrim. The invited audience sat impassively until a particularly joyous moment in the script. Peluso recalls one woman turned to another and said, "We're going to Broadway."
But the play is not about Pilgrim Church, which has been much written about as Minnesota's first black church, the home of many prominent congregants and an influential institution in the Rondo neighborhood. Grandison wanted to go way back, before all that happened and write a piece that resonated with the lessons and history of slavery -- to go back to the Genesis part of the Pilgrim story.
"The play is about faith and freedom," he said. "When is the moment you are free and what does it look like to be free? This is the legacy of people who did something -- stepping out onto a raft and leaving."
Grandison has a personal passion about this history. Young people don't have a "walking around history," an oral understanding of their past, he said.
"We don't talk about certain things because it is filled with shame," he said.
"Adrift on the Mississippi" has been a long, painstaking journey for Grandison. He wants people to see that he has honored his history.
"I hope that when this play gets up," he said, "the people who aren't here [who have passed away] will be able to say, 'He's paying attention.'"
Graydon Royce ? 612-673-7299
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