Jennifer Nelson is a quintuple-threat: a playwright, actress, director, teacher and the founder of the African Continuum Theatre. At present, she’s spending considerable time at Theater J, directing “The Whipping Man,” by Matthew Lopez.
The play takes place in Richmond on April 14, 1865, the day that Lincoln was shot. The Civil War has just ended. “In the course of the play, you learn that Simon, the older of two of the DeLeon family’s slaves, has been working in a Confederate hospital in Richmond and has just gotten back to the family home,” explained Nelson.
“The son of the family, Caleb DeLeon, comes home from the war at the same time. In the time that they were away, the surrender had happened, there was a lot of looting, there were huge fires because the retreating Confederate soldiers didn’t want the Union forces to get any supplies. So when Caleb and Simon get there, the house has been seriously damaged and most of its contents are gone.
| Onstage |
| ‘The Whipping Man’ |
| Where: Theater J, 1529 16th St. NW |
| When: Through May 20 |
| Info: $15 to $60; 202-494-8497; washingtondcjcc.org |
“It turns out that Caleb has been seriously wounded, so Simon sets about taking care of him. There is also a younger former slave named John, who is approximately the same age as Caleb. He has been hiding out, and he returns when Caleb and Simon do.”
All three characters in the play are Jewish. “All the slaves who have been raised in this Jewish home have been raised in the faith of their masters,” explained Nelson. “This is one of the things that makes the play so interesting and unique. A lot of people don’t know that there are black Jews whose religion goes back for generations.
“I think that that’s why the play has gotten so much attention, that it’s such an untold story: first, that there were Jewish Confederates; second, that there were Jewish slaveholders; and finally that there were Jewish slaves.”
Two of the main themes of the play are freedom and faith. “In the play, Passover falls that weekend,” said Nelson, “and Passover is a ritual about freedom. The coincidence that Passover fell at the same time that the war ended and all the slaves in the South were freed makes for a great kind of irony. Simon, a man of great faith, decided that they should go ahead and celebrate the Seder even though they don’t have all the correct items for the ceremony.
“We have a remarkable cast. David Emerson Toney, Mark Hairston and Alexander Strain play the three men. This is a very original piece; it takes you somewhere that no play has gone before and mixes themes together that I’m not aware of any other play bringing together before.”
