Ok, NOW I've seen it. Wow.
"Gabriel: The True Story You Have Never Been Told"
I can be equal parts really critical and utterly won over when I go see a live performance. But last night, I just felt a certain sense of relief. "Gabriel" was powerful, people, it was. I hope you can see it and I would love to know how it worked for you. We sobbed.
Lost, Buried & Forgotten
Why Lord, Why do you Tarry?
Stoke the Fire
Death Or Liberty
The title is a little more hyperbolic than I am completely comfortable with, but when visitors are learning this historical chapter in Black African and American history for the first time, the sentiment is genuine. And so many who have attended did not know much beyond the words "Gabriel's Rebellion." And, sigh, still call him "Gabriel Prosser." But have we never been told?
It's not a bad way to frame it on the one hand. We do have to be told, to be taught, to have the history passed to us. But we're not always interested, are we? Not until we are confronted by why it matters. We, and many others, ever since Gabriel and his friends and comrades died, have had some idea that knowing this story was important. But it has been important to each of us for different reasons.
Almost twenty-one years ago, the Defenders' Sacred Ground Project began the struggle to reclaim the Burial Ground in Shockoe Bottom and amplify the story of Gabriel's Rebellion. The annual gathering on October 10 (no matter what day of the week), the date that Gabriel and 9 others were hanged for attempting to claim freedom for all enslaved Virginians, became the ritual marker drawing out of the historical lore of this little city that Black people, enslaved and free, were here and making big waves.
I remember feeling that if we could help make the history of "Gabriel's Rebellion" as popularly understood as "Patrick Henry's speech" (in relation to Richmond history) people, artists of all kinds, would be compelled to interpret it - to find the nooks and crannies of meaning and blow them up into art, performance, literature, film, poetry - all of it.
The original libretto (script) was written by long time composer/writer Ron Klipp. A collaborative revision led to the Gabriel Creative Team of Ron with actor/director Solomon Foster and his brother, Jerrold Foster, who plays the lead. This Atlas Partnership production was thoughtfully and passionately realized by the cast and crew. The most significant difference between this version and the earlier one produced by Firehouse Theater in 2023, are the changes to the second act when the character of Governor James Monroe--representing the paradoxical idealism of the Revolutionary generation--was added. To fight for liberty, to call the right to freedom a birthright, while depriving others of those very conditions was the cancer growing in the nation's lymphatic system. Gabriel facing off with Monroe is abolition saluting its inevitable victory.
The run at Hanover Tavern ends on Sunday, November 16, 2025 -- tomorrow -- and it is SOLD OUT! But "Gabriel" will reopen at the Perkinson Center in Chester, Virginia, for eleven (11) performances, from January 15 through January 25. The amazing cast will perform in the evening on Thursdays and Fridays and twice on Saturdays and Sundays. Please don't miss it. And even if you do, spread the word - this ought to go out into the wide, wide world.
Footnote: Tonight my journeys into factoid rabbit holes exposed me to the following:
- Zoot Suit Riots, Los Angles, California, 1943
- Sleepy Lagoon Murder, Los Angeles, 1942
