"Sisters" - Live + Livestreamed Performance

August 30, 2020 · 3 p.m. – 5 p.m.
Keeler Tavern Museum & History Center

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SAVE the date!

We are super excited to bring back a LIVE and LIVESTREAMED performance of SISTERS on August 30th, a play written by Joanne Hudson and Royal Shiree. Based on the life of Phillis Dubois and Anna Marie Resseguie, who lived together at the Resseguie Hotel (formerly Keeler Tavern), the play has particular relevance today. As director Kimberly Williams eloquently states:

“As the energies, voices, and cries are now rising up against the systematic racist practices in America and its history, we are now truly at an historical crossroad – a crossroad that also speaks to the history of Anna Marie Resseguie, Phillis Dubois, and Frederick Douglass and the history of slavery and oppression here in Connecticut.”

SISTERS is a collaboration between two playwrights, Joanne Hudson and Royal Shirée, that seeks to shed light on the history of race and privilege in America through the fictional story of two real women, one white and one black – Anna Marie Resseguie and Phillis DuBois – who lived in and ran the Resseguie Hotel in Ridgefield, Connecticut before, during, and after the Civil War.

Having never met, other than online, the two playwrights collaborated via Skype and wrote scenes back and forth to discuss (through the characters) what it might be like for each of them to live in those times and how some things have not much changed. The play deals with issues of ownership and the economics of being a woman as well as a free woman of color in a system of slavery.

The performance will be staged in the Garden House at KTM&HC for the public and will be livestreamed. lt will also be videotaped for use in schools and in KTM&HC educational programs. Details, such as the price of admission and number of live attendees will depend on state rules for social distancing.

Please check back for additional details.