Ambler Farm created a program six years ago for the Wilton Schools‘ fifth grade curriculum, to teach about the Underground Railroad through an interactive theatrical field trip. Simulating the travels of an 1850’s runaway slave, the students ‘journey’ from the fields of Africa, across the seas to the South where they’re ‘sold’ and later take the risk to ‘escape’ to the North. Along the way they meet Harriet Tubman, William Wakeman, Eli Whitney and even a bounty hunter, played by Ambler Farm staff and volunteers.
For the first time last year, Ambler Farm offered this groundbreaking program to adults, and they will do so again this Saturday, May 2 at 7:30 – 9:30 p.m..
It’s an incredibly powerful program, for adults and kids alike. Moving around the Ambler Farm buildings and land, the participants are in the middle of the experience almost as soon as they arrive. While the kids take part during the day, the adult program is run in the dark of night, something that adds a much higher sense of drama and suspense. But it’s very real feeling for everyone, no matter the time of day.
“What makes it so exciting is that it’s truly interactive theater. We’ve had the same crew so it’s become very, very good from an acting standpoint. Doing it every year, we’ve got subtle nuances and they’re really playing those parts,” Meehan explains.
Participants follow a “storyline”:
“It starts with them in ‘Africa’ as part of a family group on a farm. They get approached by some very aggressive, scary men and they don’t know why these men have come to their village. The family is ‘captured’ and taken to the coast, put into a holding area and then ‘loaded’ on a ship. They ‘arrive’ in the new world and are ‘auctioned off’ and separated from their family. We walk them through that whole story,” explains Kevin Meehan, who is well known to both kids and parents as a Cider Mill science teacher and the program director at Ambler.
As a some of the participants are ‘auctioned off,’ everyone learns about what the slave buyers were looking for in a slave.
“We really drive home the point about how people were treated as property, to give them the smallest taste of what it felt like. Because we really can’t give them anywhere near the experience of what people went through. But it’s a hint,” Meehan says.
Later, the participants become ‘runaways,’ traveling with a conductor on the underground railroad. Moving around the farm through the fields and buildings, they visit stations and ‘safe houses.’ Along the way they meet some people they can trust–and others they shouldn’t.
“We let them know they should trust no one, that they should walk behind their conductor–who’s pretending to be their master–with their heads down and never look at a person in the eye,” Meehan says.
Along the way they meet William Wakeman, a former Wilton resident involved in the abolitionist movement who lived on Seeley Rd., in what was believed to be an underground railroad stop. They encounter a bounty hunter, an overseer, and they also meet ‘Harriet Tubman,’ who talks about being a slave and later a conductor on the underground railroad herself. She sings to them too. “It’s very, very powerful,” says Meehan, who plays a sheriff among other characters.
Tubman is played by Wilton resident Adrienne Reedy, who brings a unique perspective and background to her role. As someone whose grandmother was born in 1889 in Alabama–and whose uncle had been lynched–she offers very powerful words at the end of the program:
“For just a quick second if they can put themselves in the shoes of those people, to feel just for a second what people of color or differences felt, to know the next time they see someone mistreated, remember how this feels, remember how this made you feel.”
By sharing her own family’s experience, she helps bring the lesson alive, as something much greater than dusty history out of a school book. In personalizing the history, she helps the participants see it as something very real.
“People will make reference to ‘slavery being over for so many years,’ and [ask], “Why do people still have to bring this up?’ What I try to get them to see is that I’m not that far removed–that was my grandmother. She wasn’t that far from slavery. She told how her mother or grandmother talked about the joys of being free,” Reedy says.
She hopes the lesson is something participants can carry forward and become better people for it.
“The reason I do it, the earlier we can get to our children to be able to understand that we really do have more things in common. If I look at your family and the goals and aspirations your parents had for you, and the goals and aspirations my parents had for me, those dreams and desires were the same. If kids can understand at an early age to recognize the things we have in common, and to celebrate our differences–this program has the opportunity to teach that,” she says.
Even for the parents, says Reedy, there’s a much larger takeaway from the experience.
“What I hope happens is that people will have conversations and keep the conversation going. When you continue to see what goes on in the news–another police brutality, things going on–we need to keep having the conversation,” she says.
In addition to Meehan and Reedy, the other actors are volunteer community members including Tim Gallo, Dan Fox, Dan Reilly, John Wilson and Ambler Farm’s farmer, Jonathan Kirschner.
Following the adult program on May 2, there will be a wine and cheese reception in the Carriage Barn for all of the participants. The program cost is $40 per member, and $45 per non-member. Meehan suggests that people wear sneakers and comfortable clothes as they will be walking around the farm in the dark. To register, click here.