What did you learn from the people you played?

I played three people, two dead historical people, and one who is alive but fictitious. None of these characters had names.

The two dead people’s names have not been recorded. I played people who have been forgotten. There are 8,000 buried, but only 3,000 marked graves in the cemetery. There are more forgotten lives than remembered.

I delved into each life as much as I could with the existing limited historical documents. To learn about them. To give them a voice. To let them be remembered. The first real person was a member of the prestigious Franklin family, a niece of Ben Franklin, daughter of his brother James, who had one of the first printing presses in the colonies. They began The Newport Mercury, if you’ve heard of it. For some reason, my persons name has been lost. Which is strange seeing as my family lived by the printed word. Chalk it up to history, and lost records. And no headstone with a name on it. It’s a mystery. It was a light yet informative comic scene, with real but exaggerated family dynamics. We were one big dysfunctional and loving family. With indentured servitude as a family tradition.

The second real person was a Scottish immigrant who drowned in a shipwreck just before it landed in Fall River in 1846. What would it be like to think you are coming to America for a new life, only to die right before you set foot on land? It was honestly quite a heavy emotion I felt. So, in order to be able to perform it, I had to shed the sad emotion and find the beauty in drowning, if you can imagine that. It was a movement piece with no lines for the drowned. I imagined the moment when you are under water and looking up at the sky. I took the beauty of that image to give my person peace. Death will take you by surprise. There are no guarantees in this life. It’s a fear we all grapple with.

The third fictitious person is someone in the current day, who knows where they want to be buried and lies on the ground in her future burial spot, convincing her husband that it’s the best place. The vignette was drawn from an anecdote of someone in real life.

Playing three people kept me in the play from beginning to end, running around and having a great time going from scene to scene, song to song, life to life. There was so much joy in this production. I hope we were able to bring joy to the living, and to the real ghosts. The deceased under foot and the spirits in the air. To bring life to the dead, the forgotten and the famous. It was an honor.

All photos by Dominique Sindayiganza @sindayiganza