(39th in a series of posts on Touchstone Theatre)
“Hidden Seed: Bethlehem’s Forgotten Utopia” plays Wednesday, October 8 – 7:00-8:30p (Single Sisters House) and Thursday, October 9, 8:00-9:30p
(PBS)
http://festivalunbound.com/hidden-seed/
It was like going to Mass in the Catacombs.
The Gadfly
Three 18th century female Bethlehem ghosts — a formerly enslaved West African woman, a Native American woman, and one of the original Moravian immigrants from Europe — agree to tell everything, the whole story not just the happy parts, without lying.
Yes, everything . . . the whole story . . . not just the happy parts . . . without lying.
“They [us] will only understand if you tell them the whole story, the whole truth.”
Like about Gnadenhutten, the Moravian Massacre.
Do you know Gnadenhutten?
96 Christian Native Americans killed at the Moravian Mission of Gnadenhutten, skulls crushed with mallets to save bullets.
This anguished cry by our distraught Native American teller seemed to crack the serene Single Sisters House walls Monday night just as her tale of outrage cracked the smooth surface of pious Moravian history.
So, everything . . . the whole story . . . not just the happy parts . . . without lying.
Did you know there was slavery in Bethlehem?
And our rather matter-of-fact African American teller bluntly pierces the “miracle” of good treatment rationalized by the European with the hypocrisy of “You believed you could own us.”
“The seeds of our failure were sown side-by-side with our dreams.”
So much for Utopia. Maybe best that it be forgotten.
Or is the hidden seed of equality and unity still available to us?
If you haven’t already, y’gotta go and find out.
Whattaya doing tonight?
Festival UnBound
Ten days of original theatre, dance, music, art and conversation designed to celebrate and imagine our future together!
October 4-13
