Royall House Benefit June 5th

Nationally renowned playwright Kirsten Greenidge will be the featured speaker at the annual Giving Voice program to benefit the Royall House and Slave Quarters in Medford on Sunday, June 5, 2016 from 3:00 to 5:00 p.m.

Ms. Greenidge’s work shines a strong light on the intersection of race and class in America, and she enjoys the challenge of placing underrepresented voices on stage. “I like to write about the have nots,” she says, “the outsiders.”

Ms. Greenidge will talk about her current work on three plays based in history, centered on teen-aged Sally Hemings in Thomas Jefferson’s Paris home, the friendship between Mary Todd Lincoln and seamstress Elizabeth Keckley, and—for the Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s American Revolutions cycle—Belinda Sutton’s petition for a pension from the estate of Isaac Royall Jr.

Ms. Greenidge’s Obie award-winning Milk Like Sugar, about the decisions teen girls of color make based on the support structures available to them, recently completed a Boston run, simultaneous with the premiere of Baltimore, about a racially charged incident on a college campus. Her 2012 play The Luck of the Irish, which centers on a dispute between an African American family and the white couple who “ghost bought” a house on their behalf in the era of redlining, is based on the purchase of an Arlington, Massachusetts, home by the playwright’s grandparents.

Upon awarding Ms. Greenidge a prestigious PEN Theater Award, the judges described her as “a rare writer who incisively takes on issues of race, culture, class and hierarchy, always attending to the moment-to-moment emotional journey and a rewarding story. Her plays are inclusive, complicated, bold and American. Actors love her people and language, directors love her stories and themes, and audiences lean in.”

This annual benefit event on the museum grounds at 15 George Street in Medford, Massachusetts, supports the continued preservation and interpretation of the Royall House and Slave Quarters, home in the eighteenth century to the largest slaveholding family in Massachusetts and the enslaved Africans who made their lavish way of life possible. The event will include music, refreshments, and tours of the site’s historic buildings.

Tickets for Giving Voice are $50, or $40 for Royall House and Slave Quarters members; reservations are recommended. More information is available at RoyallHouse.org or by calling 781-396-9032.

– Submitted by Executive Director Tom Lincoln