Overview
James de Jongh's groundbreaking and unflinching play dramatizes the WPA’s 1930s-era collection of interviews with formerly enslaved people. Actors lead the audience through the tears and laughter of true stories to find a way forward through the struggles of the past.
Author's note: “The memories of ex-slaves, recorded in interviews in the
1930s, constitute the raw material of this theatre piece. The lines and dialogue of this play are the words of Black men and women in their eighties and nineties as they recall their experience of the ‘peculiar institution’ as it happened to them nearly a lifetime ago. The author has taken these verbatim texts and structured them. Some characters have
merged for stage economy, but their words and their meanings have not been altered.
This play is a projection into the past through the medium of the words of these ex-slaves, now dead for more than a generation. It is an exploration of a collective memory, because some things should never be forgotten.”
A note about the music: Afro-American musical forms are important elements in Do Lord Remember Me, but the play should not be misconstrued to be a musical. The songs should be performed as expressions of the musical legacy of slavery, arising spontaneously from the action of memory and sung, without any formal accompaniment, to hand clapping, footstomping and improvised harmonies.