REDBIRD Festival, Part Two

Jade Arnold as Abraham Galloway, in Howard L. Craft’s The Fire of Freedom at the REDBIRD new play festival. Photo courtesy the ArtsCenter.

From my review published on http://www.cvnc.org with the title “Redbird’s Second Program Features Hot New Play By Howard Craft”

Part Two of the Carrboro ArtsCenter’s thrilling REDBIRD Festival of New One-Act Plays by North Carolina Playwrights had its first performance the evening of March 14, with the remaining two out of the five plays presented. The glory of the program came in the second play, a very new work by Howard L. Craft. Inspired by wonderful historian David S. Cecelski’s book, The Fire of Freedom: Abraham Galloway and the Slaves Civil War (UNC Press), Craft’s one-actor play proves (again) that a monologue, in the right hands, can be supremely dramatic….

Jade Arnold is an extremely charismatic actor, with powerful vocal skills, explosive physicality and breathtaking timing, making his embodiment of Galloway as compelling as Craft’s words. In a hidden attic, in New Bern, in 1863, Galloway has come to speak from his own observations and experiences to a crowd of black men about whether to take up with the Union Army; about what and who can be trusted and why, distinguishing incisively between the cause of the Union and the cause of Freedom. A representative from President Lincoln is to follow him, and Galloway is making sure the men understand that they are in a position to bargain and require, before committing themselves to the army. “I am not asking you to trust his words, but there are things that you can and must trust. Trust in a thing to be true to its nature. The nature of a bullfrog is to leap. The nature of an Army is to kill. The slave will not be free without much killing.”

READ THE FULL REVIEW HERE.