Mothers of Freedom

The Story

On a snowy morning in January 1888, one of India's most famous advocates for women's rights knocks at Harriet Tubman's back door. Their conversation - woven with stories, memories, speeches from their lives - takes us on a journey of friendship, solidarity, challenge and hope. What happens when two freedom-fighters meet? Mothers of Freedom is an original co-created play based on a real conversation between Harriet Tubman and Pandita Ramabai.

Harriet Tubman - abolitionist, activist, union army general - astonished Phildelphia and the world with her daring rescues of hundreds of enslaved people from the Eastern shore of Maryland. Thirty years later she finds herself still balancing her work as a freedom-fighter and the day-to-day challenges of motherhood, health, and balancing the needs of those around her.

Pandita Ramabai astonished Calcutta at the age of eighteen with her extraordinary memory for Sanskrit verses and her presence as a speaker. She became known as an advocate for the rights of women and girls in India, speaking out against child-marriage and the mistreatment of widows. But when she herself married a man of a different caste, converted to Christianity, and soon became a widow herself - she became a controversial figure. In 1886, her restless pursuit of further education and funds for her cause brought her to America, and to Harriet Tubman's doorstep.

What did they say to each other? What was it like for this young Indian woman to hear Harriet Tubman's stories? Did they laugh, compare notes, talk about their pain, their anger, their children, their hopes?

Mothers of Freedom imagines that conversation. It finds revolution in the small intimate moments of women talking around the kitchen table - and in their courage in the face of impossible odds. Interwoven with dance, live music, and excerpts of real speeches and writings, this play asks: what can we learn from the women who came before us? How do we sustain the freedom they fought for?

Details

The play runs 75 minutes with no intermission.

The venue is the Cambridge Foundry at 101 Rogers Street, Cambridge, MA 02142

Directions and Parking

The theatre is a 10 minute walk from the red line (Kendall/MIT)

Parking is available at the Cambridgeside Galleria Mall (7 minute walk). There is also limited street parking.

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"I hope my child will remember the story of Harriet, and try to be as helpful to her own dear countrywomen as Harriet was and is to her own people."

-Pandita Ramabai in a letter to her daughter, 1888

"I was the conductor of the Underground Railroad for eight years and I can say what most conductors can't say - I never ran my train off the tracks and I never lost a passenger."

-Harriet Tubman speaking at a women's suffrage convention, 1896

Host or Publisher Theatre of Eternal Values - America