American Rot

When

March 22, 2024    
7:00 pm

Where

Ellen Stewart Theatre
66 East 4th Street, 2nd floor, New York, NY
$25

Purchase tickets HERE. Use discount code HANDSON for $5 off.

Written by Kate Taney Billingsley
Directed by Estelle Parsons

Set in a diner off the New Jersey turnpike, two historically-linked American families explore the roots of their trans-generational trauma through difficult conversations on racism and white supremacy. Stricken with guilt, Jim Taney, a descendant of Chief Justice Roger Brooke Taney, who penned the infamous Dred Scott decision of 1857, offers an apology to the family of Walter Scott, a descendant of the formerly enslaved Dred Scott. Walter, and a Chorus of other characters, investigate why an apology alone will not absolve Jim. As protest theater, the play confronts the concept of white “wokeness”, the boundaries of white liberalism, and unveils the shared national consequences of white supremacy; serving as an entryway into a dialogue on reparations.