It’s a Wednesday evening at the Spotlight Theater in Berea.
On stage, four actresses sit around a long white piece of tobacco canvas draped across a quilting frame with sewing baskets at their feet. The play contains six scenes, each representing a certain time period, from the Revolutionary War until the present day.
Production assistant Kat Davis directs scene two, which represents the Civil War. Susan Crumbaugh was a slave in Kentucky during that time and reportedly lived to be 102 years old. She’s highlighted in this scene that Davis directs.
“So you’re going to sing across the stage until you get to them. So, we’re going to start at the top of scene two, go ahead,” directs Davis.
Johnnie Chavours portrays Susan Crumbaugh and sings, “I got more trouble than I can share, but the Lord, you never give me more than I can bear. Amen, Amen.”
Production assistant Davis explains the play’s theme.
“The play is called The Sewing Circle, and it is where we are basically mending the fabric of time. And we’re mending it with the people that throughout much of history have always done the sewing and the mending, the women. So, we’re highlighting different characters, eras, and women throughout history and their impact on our society,” explains Davis.
Berea playwright Hank Gevedon wrote The Sewing Circle. He calls it a historical drama. The 61-year-old said the Association for Teaching Black History in Kentucky, based at Berea College, awarded Gevedon a grant to help promote Black history. Gevedon says that in each scene, the production features a Black female character based on a real woman who had an impact on the world. Gevedon said the production highlights these forgotten voices at some of America’s most critical moments. He recalls the woman represented in the first scene.
”In the first scene during Revolutionary War Times, you’re going to meet a woman named Jenny Sidebottom. And as far as we know, nothing was ever written directly about her, but a lot of it was written about her husband, John Sidebottom, and he was a free white man in Kentucky. He saved the life of a guy named James Monroe, who would go on to become the fifth president of the United States. And we tell Jenny Jane Sidebottom’s story through a speech that she gives and shares her position and her situation in the late 1700s in Kentucky. She lived her life out in Clark County and had 17 children. She was a free Black woman in Kentucky,” explained Gevedon.
On this night, the cast rehearses only the first three scenes based on the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, and World War I. In scene three, the focus is on World War I and Nurse Mary Merritt. This character, says Gevedon, was the first Black nurse in Kentucky and is played by Johnnie Chavours. The scene opens with Chavours hovering over what she imagines to be a soldier’s uniform that she says smells of mustard gas.
Chavours said she’s honored to play the main character in each scene. But she said it’s the prayer she sings as Susan Crumbaugh during the Civil War that’s stirring. Chavours recites a few lines of that prayer that she said feels relevant in today’s climate.
“We thank you, Lord, for the needle and thread, for the days past and the days ahead. But, oh Lord, we pray for this divided land. The freedom for each to make a stand. And that’s what we want to do, make a stand in what it means for us to continue to be one as a country,” reads Chavours.
As the rehearsal ended, assistant director and actress Joy Sunshine Lady said it was easy to see the production as a tragedy with all of the scenes centering around wars and upheaval. But she says the beauty of the production is that it encompasses the beauty of life.
“At the end we come to a moment where we challenge ourselves and the audience to question how they are going to learn from the past, what they are going to do to repair our strand, to move forward in a lifegiving way,” said Lady.
Playwright Hank Gevedon said The Sewing Circle is scheduled to be presented at the Spotlight Theater in Berea on April 4th,5th, and 6th. He said the play is expected to be recorded and used as a teaching tool.
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