In "Harriet's Return," Harriet Tubman learns freedom isn't free.
"It has a universal theme of finding your own personal freedom and courage to live the life that you have always envisioned," actress Karen Jones Meadows said.
The one-woman show, written by and starring Jones Meadows, an award-winning actress and playwright, portrays the legendary life of Tubman.
Jones Meadows transforms on stage from the young Harriet living as a slave into the famous Underground Railroad conductor, and then finally into an elderly woman who challenges new generations to find their purpose.
She includes a lot of little-known information about Tubman's life, like that she was friends with Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau.
"She was married, and no one thinks of her as a woman but as an abolitionist and a nonhuman entity that rose up out of the call of duty," she said. "She was very angry with President Lincoln. She thought he was really slow to act. When you're trying to kill a snake, you don't tickle it - you just crush it. And she felt that's what he should do with the South. Quit all this talking and negotiating stuff."
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She also said Tubman never smiled.
"She didn't have teeth and was embarrassed about it," she said. "They rotted out over a period of time. But she was funny and loved to tell stories. She was really tiny, too. She was maybe 5 feet."
Jones Meadows said she was meant to write the play because strangers would come up to her on the street in New York and say, 'Do you know anything about Harriet Tubman?' without knowing who she was.
"For no reason, just randomly," she said. "Harriet kept coming to me, and I said, 'OK, I get it. I get it."
Throughout the performance, Jones Meadows' seamless costume changes on stage each embody a phase in Harriet's life. Jones Meadows has the ability to flawlessly assume each identity by adopting their mannerisms. She exposes Harriet's raw emotions while teaching the audience to always persevere.
"I think that it gives us the charge to say to our obstacles, 'So what?'" she said.
The set is a table, a chair, a basket, a stump, a rock and a forest behind it all.
"The forest is sort of a background that has this foreboding and participatory energy, and it's lit with a golden light," Jones Meadows said.
She said Tubman fought in the Civil War and led troops into battle.
"She designed battles, and I hit on one of the major ones in the play," Jones Meadows said. "She was supposed to be at (the Battle of) Harper's Ferry, which was a bloodbath, basically. But she wasn't there. She was sick and couldn't go, but she probably would have been killed. Tubman was buried with full military honor."
Proceeds from the production benefit NewChild Productions' Performing and Media Arts Academy, a nonprofit organization that is co-sponsoring the event and teaches young African-Americans how to succeed in the entertainment field.
Jones Meadows, a member of NewChild Productions, holds workshops to teach kids about every aspect of theater, from script writing to costume design.
"I want to make sure these kids get as much benefit as possible out of this experience," she said.
"Harriet's Return"
Saturday, 3 p.m. and 7 p.m.
Sunday, 3 p.m.
VSA North Fourth Arts Center
4904 Fourth St. N.W.
$10 students and seniors, $15 general
