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HER GENERAL TUBMAN 58 THE PENNSYLVANIA GAZETTE Mar| Apr 2020 PHOTO BY CANDACE DICARLO In Lorene Cary’s new play—her ﬁ rst— Harriet Tubman shuttles between leading a Civil War raid that freed hundreds of enslaved plantation workers and a men’s prison in present-day Philadelphia, where she ﬁ nds love and recruits soldiers for the Union Army. The path to its production By Julia M. Klein was complicated, too. Mar| Apr 2020 THE PENNSYLVANIA GAZETTE 59 I have this scene,” Lorene Cary That image “ended up getting dropped Nolen says he delighted in those email C’78 G’78 is saying over a salad into the emotional center of an opera exchanges: “The way in which she re- “So of fried Brussels sprouts. “I treatment” about “two men in love,” a sponded to the work that she saw here keep trying to think what the project titled His. One character, in de- was something I really valued. I appreci- hell to do with this scene.” spair over being gay, describes walking ated her perspective. I loved her writing The acclaimed author and senior lec- into the ocean, at age 13, determined to and how she captured ideas, even in turer in Penn’s Department of English is drown. “And Tubman was there,” says emails.” He also admired Cary’s social describing her passion for Harriet Tub- Cary, “and she sang in a voice the color activism, especially her service on the man, the legendary Underground Rail- of memory, and pulled him out.” Tubman now-defunct Philadelphia School Re- road conductor who also spearheaded a tells the would-be suicide: “I married a form Commission, which he calls “he- daring Civil War raid. “For certain sub- man [John Tubman] who wanted me to roic.” In theater, he says, “relationships jects,” says Cary, “you just get obsessed lie still, but God made me to run. And are everything. And connection.” and they lodge, like a cyst.” God made you just the way you are. You So it wasn’t a gargantuan leap for Cary That obsession has blossomed into find someone to love you just as you are, to approach Nolen, in February 2016, Cary’s first play, in which a time-travel- then you’ll understand why I’m taking and ask if he saw her gay love story as a ing Tubman appears at a present-day you out.” potential musical. “No, I don’t, actually,” Philadelphia prison to enlist men to the That was the scene that stayed with Nolen told her. “I see it as an opera. I see Union cause. At once fanciful and his- Cary, haunting her. “It’s got to be opera,” it as a possible movie.” torically resonant, My General Tubman, she thought. But their conversation continued, with like many new plays, morphed through Cary telling Nolen facts he hadn’t known an arduous multiyear development pro- Opera Philadelphia, which has be- about the historical Tubman. She re- cess. Originally scheduled to run from come a nationally respected incubator counted how, at the end of the Civil War, January 16 to March 1 at Philadelphia’s of new works, encouraged Cary to de- Nelson Davis, a consumptive African Arden Theatre Company, the show was velop her gay-men-and-Tubman idea. American Union soldier, had walked extended, by popular demand, through But finding the right composer proved from Texas to Auburn, New York, to March 15. It coincides with a cultural a challenge, and, in the end, the com- knock on Tubman’s door and ask her to moment that has spawned Erica Arm- pany decided not to commission the nurse him back to health. In 1869, they strong Dunbar C’94’s biography, She piece. “Dead in the water,” Cary says of were married. Came to Slay; the film Harriet, depict- the nascent libretto. “That’s amazing,” Nolen recalls saying. ing Tubman’s escape from slavery and “I tried to write this as a short story,” “That sounds like a play. Is that a story early Underground Railroad days; and she says. “It didn’t work.” And she knew you’re interested in writing?” Cary said a debate over adding Tubman’s image she didn’t want to write a novel about it was. to the $20 bill. Tubman. “It felt to me,” she says, “like a My General Tubman was commis- But the “very specific origin” of Cary’s story that needed performance.” What’s sioned under the auspices of the Arden’s literary interest in Tubman was simpler: more, “the opera had told me that this Independence Foundation New Play a glimpse, about a decade ago, of an is my time of leaving strict realism.” Showcase, which supports the creation iconic photograph at Historic Cold That’s when Cary, a regular theater- of new plays and musicals. “Commis- Spring Village, a living-history museum goer, turned to the Arden, a nonprofit sions are, in some ways, an investment in Cape May. The South Jersey shore re- regional theater whose mission is in a particular writer’s voice,” Nolen says. sort is a favorite haunt for Cary and her “bringing to life great stories by great They “buy a little bit of time, make a husband, Robert Clarke Smith, an or- storytellers.” Cary and Terrence J. Nolen, little bit of space” to develop a project. dained minister. Tubman’s connection the theater’s cofounder and producing But they are no guarantee that the Ar- to the town was spending summers as a artistic director, had met in 2003 when den, which has unveiled 45 world pre- housekeeper and cook at the Cape May Cary’s historical novel, The Price of a mieres since its 1988 founding, will pro- Hotel. Cary kept envisioning Tubman Child, was named the inaugural selec- duce a specific show. “I invest in pro- walking along the shoreline and watch- tion of the Free Library of Philadelphia’s cess,” Nolen says. ing dolphins cavorting in the waves. “One Book, One Philadelphia” program. “They looked like family, and they Nolen had read the book, and the Arden Cary’s career has been marked by a looked like freedom, they looked so had sponsored a reading of excerpts. penchant for experimentation and chal- pretty, and the sound [they make] is like Afterwards, he and Cary occasionally lenge. As a writer, she has explored con- laughing,” Cary says. corresponded about theater. temporary fiction (Pride), memoir (Black 60 THE PENNSYLVANIA GAZETTE Mar| Apr 2020 Ice and Ladysitting: My Year with Nana “If I could, other people at the time. He was also at the End of Her Century), young adult nearly 17 years older, white, and her boss. history (Free!: Great Escapes from Slav- I would just “Everything was wrong! Nothing was ery on the Underground Railroad), and right,” she recalls. “As Bob says, ‘If Dr. historical fiction (The Price of a Child Phil had seen us, he would have said: and If Sons, Then Heirs). She wrote the write. It’s the ‘Don’t do it.’” They did it anyway, and video scripts for the President’s House have two daughters. (Cary also has a exhibition on Philadelphia’s Indepen- joyous thing stepson and four grandchildren.) As a dence Mall, telling the stories of nine former editor, Smith is her first reader; enslaved African Americans in President I do. It’s the she sings in his church choirs. George Washington’s household. In- “As often happens, when people have spired by her work on His, she success- remarried, when it works, it’s because fully sought a residency in the American thing I feel I’m you’ve been able to find a better self with Lyric Theater’s Composer Librettist De- this new person,” Cary says. It’s not sur- velopment Program, completing a one- built for.” prising that she was intrigued by both act libretto, The Gospel According to the happiness and improbability of Har- Nana, based on Ladysitting. riet Tubman’s second marriage, to a man A West Philadelphia native who now about two decades her junior. lives in the city’s Graduate Hospital was trying to diversify its student body. Cary, whose paternal grandmother, neighborhood, Cary also has been a com- She would later chronicle that experience Nana (the central figure in Ladysitting), mitted teacher and activist. In 1998, she in Black Ice, her literary debut. Praised was so fair-skinned she could pass for founded Art Sanctuary to bring African for its candor and lyrical prose, the 1991 white, says she often wearies of talking American arts to local audiences [“Alum- memoir recounted both her alienation about race in America. But “I’m always ni Profiles,” Jul|Aug 2000]. On the School and her gradual adjustment to the private thinking about it,” she adds. “I suppose Reform Commission, she worked to boarding school. She would eventually I write about it because it’s the way I can eliminate zero-tolerance punishments. return both to teach and to serve on the discipline myself to think about it with- She has created a website called school’s board of directors. out just rolling into rage.” SafeKidsStories.com, to which her Penn Cary entered Penn loving biology and African American—and American— writing students contribute [“Gazetteer,” thinking she might become a doctor. But history figures prominently in Cary’s Jul|Aug 2017]. One offshoot of that site is her parents had just separated, causing work. The protagonist of The Price of a #VoteThatJawn, a project to spur registra- financial, as well as emotional, stress. Child, based on an actual incident, is an tion and voting among 18-year-olds.

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