Mason District Arts Council brings American history to life
Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, John Adams, suffragist Amelia Walker, and other figures from American history commemorated the nation’s 250th anniversary in a series of performances organized by the Mason District Arts Council.
The free show “Passages: One-Act Plays and Oratorios” was presented at the Pozez Jewish Community Center of Northern Virginia on June 20. It is one of the art-focused events in the council’s Mason Arts 250 program aimed at engaging the public in the ideas at the heart of the American Revolution that shaped the nation’s history.
Janis Harless, portraying Nancy Mason, the daughter of Founding Father George Mason, spoke about her father’s legacy and her family’s complex history.
George Mason wrote the Virginia Declaration of Rights and the Virginia Constitution. He refused to sign the U.S. Constitution because it didn’t contain a bill of rights.
Yet, when Nancy Mason was 10 years old, she was given an enslaved child named Penny, also aged 10, who continued to take care of Nancy’s personal needs and care for her children for 40 years, Harless said.
Harless is a theater artist and historian who also serves as a docent at Gunston Hall, George Mason’s home in Mason Neck, which she calls “the home of American rights.”
“How long must women wait for liberty?” cried Lynne Garvey-Hodge in a portrayal of suffragist Amelia Walker.
Dressed in a period costume with a sash in the colors of the suffragist movement – gold for “the light of God in all of us,” white for purity and temperance, and purple for loyalty and majesty – Garvey-Hodges recounted women’s struggles to gain the right to vote.
Walker joined thousands of other women at parades and picket lines in front of the White House. She was one of several women arrested and imprisoned in inhumane conditions at the Occoquan Workhouse.
Eventually, President Woodrow Wilson, a staunch segregationist, proposed a constitutional amendment granting women the right to vote, she said. The 19th Amendment was passed by Congress in 1919 and ratified by the states in 1920.
Related story: A Mason Arts concert celebrates America’s 250th anniversary
“History is not just a statue in a park; it’s a river. What if that river flowed differently?” suggested Anthony Dauer, introducing the first act of “Passages: Declaration of Emancipation,” an alternative-history play he wrote in which language condemning the slave trade was not struck from the Declaration of Independence.
The play consists of a debate among Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Thomas Paine, Edward Rutledge, and George Mason. They discussed the pros and cons of maintaining the support of Southern states, recognizing the rights of all human beings, and the economic and political consequences of moving too early to banish slavery.
Anthony Dauer returned as Thomas Paine for the second act of “Passages: Pamphleteer,” set during the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in 1787. As the men made the decisions, Abigail Adams, Mercy Otis Warren, and Judith Sargent saw the promise of liberty for all evaporate as the new government took shape.
Another one-act play brings the story to the present. “Life with Lightning,” written by Jodi Smith, is set in a therapist’s office where a mother talks about her autistic son and his fascination with light and the symbolism of the Statue of Liberty.
Two final Mason Arts 250 activities – a community mural and the installation of the Wishing Tree – will take place Saturday, June 27, at the Eileen Garnett Civic Space, at 7200 Columbia Pike in Annandale.
Residents are invited to participate in the mural project, 11 a.m.-5 p.m., in cooperation with ArtLords. The mural design is inspired by the Emma Lazarus poem “The New Colossus,” which is inscribed on a plaque inside the Statue of Liberty. The finished mural will be displayed on the fencing at the construction site for the Eastgate Apartments on John Marr Drive.
The Eileen Garnett Civic Space will be busy next Saturday, as the DMV Asian Night Market will also take place there, from 2 p.m. to 10 p.m., with food, craft vendors, and live music.