ENCOUNTERS: Possessing Harriet

WED, Oct 11, 5PM-7PM (in person)

Please join us for ENCOUNTERS: Posessing Harriet, a special dialogue event that features small group discussions, on critical questions about the play, as well as specialist feedback and engagement. The Encounters Series is a program of UConn's Dodd Human Rights Impact Democracy and Dialogues Initiative.

This conversation model will dive deeply into the themes of Possessing Harriet through facilitated, small-group dialogues followed by a "question and answer"-style conversation with our community partners. Readings from the play are provided beforehand to better encourage informed and informal dialogue within conversations that often prove to be polarizing, and thus unproductive. HartBeat Ensemble will collaborate with Human Rights Impact using their patented Encounters model to provide our audiences an opportunity to take a deeper dive into the intersectionality of abolition and suffrage in the 19th century and what it means in today’s battles around reparations and voting rights.  

HartBeat Ensemble would like to introduce our guest experts for this event:

Fiona Vernal is the Director of Engaged, Public, Oral, and Community Histories (EPOCH) and Associate Professor of History and Africana Studies at the University of Connecticut. In 2023 she will serve as the Director of Undergraduate Studies in the History Department, Interim Associate Director of Africana Studies, PI on CT Humanities Partnership Grant to establish an infrastructure for oral history in the state, and Co-PI on the University Capacity Development Program with the Global Training and Development Institute (GTDI) in Global Affairs. Her teaching and research center African, Caribbean, African Diaspora histories. She curates a number of public-facing projects, all of which center oral history as part of its core methodology. 

Toto Kisaku is an award-winning Congolese playwright, actor, director, and producer. Detained for putting on plays critical of the Congolese government, Toto arrived in the United States in 2015 seeking political asylum, which he was granted in 2018. His one-man play, Requiem for an Electric Chair tells the story of his persecution and eventual exile from Congo. This piece was featured at the Carriage House this year as part of HartBeat's (Im)migration360 project.

*Plus a special guest from the Possessing Harriet production!

Running Time: 2 hours

These programs are supported in part by The Edward C. and Ann T. Roberts Foundation, the Greater Hartford Council for the Arts and CT Humanities. Additional support provided by the J. Bissell Foundation, CT Humanities, CT Office of the Arts, Department of Economic and Community Development, National Endowment for the Arts and Travelers.