The Great Privation: How to Flip Ten Cents into a Dollar

Tour synopsis, cast & creatives

The Great Privation is about Grave Robbing: Grave Robbing during the early 1800's. Grave Robbing during the Cholera outbreak. Grave Robbing in Pennsylvania. Robbing of Black bodies for medical research. Black bodies that were commodified even after death. Black bodies that never got their rest. In early 1800's Pennsylvania, a mother and daughter keep vigil at a grave. Today, at a Summer Camp on the same grounds, a new, yet not entirely different mother and daughter navigate a new, yet not entirely different landscape. Alongside them, two distinct male figures move in and out of both sets of lives, threatening to unearth dark truths - or to help create them. As timelines collide and secrets and lives become buried and revealed, a reckoning comes calling to them all: the roots to our ancestors are not as long as we may think.

Cast/Performers

Ella Dacres (Charity / Modern-Day Charity), Sydney Sainte (Mother / Modern-Day Mother), Romeo Mika (Cuffee / Modern-Day Cuffee), Jack Gouldbourne (John / Modern-Day John)

Creatives/Company

Author: Nia Akilah Robinson
Presented by: Theatre503
Director(s): Kalungi Ssebandeke, Yemurai Zvaraya (movement), Fran Cattaneo (casting), Lydia Doyle (casting assistant)
Producer(s): Zena Collins (executive producer), Clarisse Makundul Productions (associate producer)
Design: Ruth Badila
Costume: Ruth Badila
Lighting: Chuma Emembolu
Sound: Jose Guillermo Puello
Other(s): Aundrea Fudge (voicie and dialect coach), Adam Jefferys (production manager)
Stage Manager: Shereen Hamilton