A beam of white light illuminated actor Anita Singleton-Prather’s face. “War was on the way,” she said, addressing the audience.
Portraying a formerly enslaved African in heaven, Singleton-Prather wore a white dress and held a large wooden staff. “Folks was asking us, what side we was going to fight: red or blue?” she said, referring to the Continental Army’s blue uniforms and the British army’s red coats during the American revolutionary war. Both sides implored enslaved Africans to fight by offering them freedom, which was rarely granted. She was joined on stage by a chorus of Black singers also clad in white who served as holy angels. They repeated her words as though they were a church congregation engaged in call-and-response.
