Charleston Stage: A Woman Called Truth Curriculum Guide
A Woman Called Truth
Education Guide
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Charleston Stage: A Woman Called Truth Curriculum Guide
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Setting The Stage
Credits
Script written by Sandra Fenichel Asher
Directed by Julian Wiles
Set Design by Ken Barnett
Costume Design by Barbara Young
Lighting Design by Paul Hartmann
Theatre Etiquette
Discuss proper audience behavior with your students. While applause, laughter, and
reaction, when appropriate, are appreciated and anticipated, unnecessary noise or
movement can distract the actors and audience members, while also affecting the quality
of the performance. It is very important that students understand how their behavior can
affect a live performance. You, the teacher, and other adult chaperones for your group are
responsible for your student’s behavior. We ask that the chaperones sit among the
students rather than together in a group behind the students. Our ushers will react to
disruptions and attempt to quell them. We reserve the right to remove any student causing
a distraction from the theatre. When entering the theatre venue please make sure all of
your students have name tags with their name and your school’s name.
Charleston Stage: A Woman Called Truth Curriculum Guide
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MEET THE CREATORS!
Sandra Fenichel Asher has published 24 books for young
readers (as Sandy Asher) and over two dozen plays,
including Across the Plains; Dancing with Strangers;
Emma; I Will Sing Life; Little Women: Meg, Jo, Beth, and
Amy; Once, in the Time of Trolls; The Wise Men of Chelm
and A Woman Called Truth (all Dramatic Publishing) and
The Wolf and Its Shadows (Anchorage). Among her many
honors are the AATE Distinguished Play Award, the
IUPUI/Bonderman Award, an ASSITEJ Outstanding Play
for Young Audiences citation, the Joseph Campbell
Memorial Award presented by The Open Eye Theater, a
National Endowment for the Arts grant in playwriting,
AATE’s Charlotte Chorpenning Award for a distinguished
body of work in children’s theater, the New England
Theater Conference’s Aurand Harris Memorial Playwriting
Award and an Aurand Harris Fellowship grant from the
Children’s Theatre Foundation of America. Writer-inresidence at Drury University in Springfield, MO from
1986 to 2003, Asher now lives in Lancaster, PA with her
husband, two cats and a dog. She is a member of The
Dramatists Guild and co-founder of the website “USA
Plays for Kids.”
Charleston Stage: A Woman Called Truth Curriculum Guide
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CHARACTERS
Sojourner Truth
Young Sojourner Truth
Young Pete
Young Sojourner’s Brother
Pete grownup
Baumfrey (Sojourner’s father
Old Man With Shovel
Bob
Sissy
Sojourner’s Mother
Old Woman
Mrs. Neeley
Mrs. Gedney
Caitlin/Auctioneer
Gedney
John Dumont
Righteous Reverend
Judge
Mrs. Whiting
Mrs. Wagener
Squire Chip
John Neeley
Synopsis of A Woman Called Truth
Spoiler alert, you may not want to read this before seeing the play.
“Well, children, where there’s so much racket, there must be something out of
kilter.” So begins the historic “Ain’t I A Woman?” speech of Sojourner Truth,
whose words reverberate over a century to speak to us about racism and sexism
today in the stirring final scene of this play. A Woman Called Truth chronicles the
life of this remarkable woman from the day she is sold away from her family as a
young girl, through her struggle to free herself and her son, to her emergence as
a popular and respected figure advocating abolition and women’s rights.
Throughout her life, Sojourner Truth came upon injustice and fought it with
uncommon clear-sightedness, courage, and wit. A Woman Called Truth, which
combines her actual words with authentic slave songs, spirituals, and folk songs
of the period, has been honored by the National Endowment for the Arts, the
American Alliance for Theatre and Education, and the IUPUI Children’s Theatre
Symposium. As one enthusiastic audience member put it: “This play should tour
the country forever!”
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Curriculum Connections
VOCABULARY WORDS!
Abolitionist
Civil Rights
Human Rights
Integrate
Segregate
Suffrage
n. a person who opposed
slavery and worked to end it
n. privileges given to a person
by their government or society.
They include the right to vote,
to own property or of free
speech. These can be taken
away
n. privileges given to a person
by natural law such as life and
liberty. These can be violated,
but unlike civil rights, they
cannot be taken away by
society
v. to combine, put together.
During the Civil Rights
Movement of the 1960s
integration referred specifically
to allowing different races to
live and work together
v. to separate. Prior to the Civil
Rights Movement of the
sixties, black and white people
were often separated in public
places, including buses,
theatres and schools
n. the right to vote
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A TIMELINE of Sojourner Truth
c. 1797 Isabella born into slavery on the Hardenbergh estate, Swartekill, Ulster
County, New York
c. 1806 bought at auction for $100 by John Neely, near Kingston, NY
c. 1808 bought for $105 by Martinus Schryver of Kingston, NY, staying there about 18
months
1810 bought for 70 pounds (c.$175) by John Dumont, New Paltz, NY, -- she bore five
children, Diana, Peter, Elizabeth, Sophia and a child who died in infancy
late 1826 Isabella walks to freedom with infant daughter, Sophia -- she had to leave the
other children behind because they were not legally freed in the emancipation order
July 4, 1827 New York state emancipates slaves born after 1799
1827-28 wins landmark law suit to recover son Peter who had been illegally sold into
slavery in Alabama
1829 moves to New York City with her son Peter
1832-35 meets Robert Matthews, known as the Prophet Matthias, joins the Matthias
Kingdom communal colony in New York City -- Kingdom dissolved after Prophet
Matthias is arrested and tried for murder -- Isabella wins slander suit
1836-42 Isabella in New York City -- after son Peter ships out on whaling ship, Zone of
Nantucket; she receives a total of five letters from him -- ship returns to port with no
sign of Peter and Isabella never hears from him again
1843 at age 46, Isabella adopts the name Sojourner Truth, leaves New York and travels
to Springfield, Mass. -- grandson James Caldwell born
1844-46 joins the utopian Northampton Association in Northampton, Mass., where she
meets many anti-slavery reformers including William Lloyd Garrison, Frederick
Douglass and Olive Gilbert, an abolitionist-feminist who later wrote the Narrative of
Sojourner Truth
1850 Isabella Van Wagenen, “sometimes called Sojourner Truth,” purchases home for
$300 mortgage -- Narrative published by Olive Gilbert with preface by William Lloyd
Garrison
1851 travels to Rochester, NY, where she stays with Underground Railroad leader,
Amy Post -- in May, attends women’s rights convention in Akron, Ohio, where she
delivers the speech later known as “Ain’t I A Woman?”
1856 comes to Battle Creek, Michigan, to address Friends of Human Progress
convention, at the invitation of Michigan Quaker Henry Willis
1857 sells Northampton property and buys house and lot in Harmonia, six miles west
of Battle Creek, Michigan
1863 ill for “many weeks,” stays with the Merritt family in Battle Creek -- in November,
takes Thanksgiving dinner supplies, donated by Battle Creek citizens, to the black
soldiers stationed at Camp Ward in Detroit
1864 in June, Sojourner and thirteen-year-old grandson Sammy Banks leave Battle
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Creek for New York and New Jersey -- arrive in Washington, DC in the fall
1864 in October, visits President Abraham Lincoln at the White House
1865 assigned to work at Freedman’s Hospital in Washington -- rides the Washington,
DC, streetcars to force their desegregation
1867 moves from Harmonia into Battle Creek, converting Merritt “barn” on College
Street into her home
1871 Nanette Gardner of Detroit records in Truth’s Book of Life that she was the first
woman to vote in a Michigan state election -- in September, leaves for Kansas with
grandson Sammy Banks to promote idea of free land there for ex-slaves
1875 following an operation, Sammy Banks dies and is buried at Oak Hill Cemetery -third edition of the Narrative, including the Book of Life, published by Frances Titus of
Battle Creek
1876 improved in health after being treated by “Dr. Orville Guiteau, veterinarian,”
Truth leaves for Chicago, intending to visit Philadelphia Centennial with Frances Titus - again forced to return home because of illness
1877 Frances Titus returns home after traveling with Sojourner around Michigan
1878-79 Sojourner and Titus travel through New York and other eastern states for six
months during the fall and winter -- visit Kansas and Wisconsin during the summer, to
campaign for free land for former slaves
1880-82 makes limited appearances around Michigan, speaking for temperance and
against capital punishment
1883 in July, ill with ulcers on her legs, she is treated by Dr. John Harvey Kellogg of
the Battle Creek Sanitarium, who is said to have grafted some of his own skin onto
Sojourner’s leg
1883 November 26 -- Sojourner Truth dies at her College Street home in Battle Creek,
Michigan -- funeral two days later, followed by burial in Oak Hill Cemetery next to her
grandson, Sammy Banks
Charleston Stage: A Woman Called Truth Curriculum Guide
Images
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Charleston Stage: A Woman Called Truth Curriculum Guide
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Ain’t I a Woman
Soujourner’s Most Famous Speech…
Women’s Convention in Akron, Ohio, 1851
“Well, children, where there is so much racket there must be something out
of kilter. I think that ‘twixt the negroes of the South and the women at the
North, all talking about rights, the white men will be in a fix pretty soon. But
what’s all this here talking about?
That man over there says that women need to be helped into carriages, and
lifted over ditches, and to have the best place everywhere. Nobody ever
helps me into carriages, or over mud puddles, or gives me any best place!
And ain’t I a woman? Look at me! Look at my arm! I have ploughed and
planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head me! And ain’t I a
woman? I could work as much and eat as much as a man - when I could get
it - and bear the lash as well! And ain’t I a woman? I have borne thirteen
children, and seen most all sold off to slavery, and when I cried out with my
mother’s grief, none but Jesus heard me! And ain’t I a woman?
Then they talk about this thing in the head; what’s this they call it? [member
of audience whispers, “intellect”] That’s it, honey. What’s that got to do with
women’s rights or negroes’ rights? If my cup won’t hold but a pint, and yours
holds a quart, wouldn’t you be mean not to let me have my little half measure
full? Then that little man in black there, he says women can’t have as much
rights as men, ‘cause Christ wasn’t a woman! Where did your Christ come
from? Where did your Christ come from? From God and a woman! Man had
nothing to do with Him.
If the first woman God ever made was strong enough to turn the world
upside down all alone, these women together ought to be able to turn it back,
and get it right side up again! And now they is asking to do it, the men better
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let them. Obliged to you for hearing me, and now old Sojourner ain’t got
nothing more to say.”
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Discussion before the Performance
All Language Arts completes the following standards:
o Developing and using oral communication
o Understanding and reading literary texts
o Understanding and using informational texts
o Building Better vocabulary
o Developing written communication
o Developing and using research strategies
All Social Studies meets the following standards:
o Understanding of different life around them and across the world
o Understanding of different regions and human systems
All Theatre Activities meet the following standards:
– Connecting ideas and action
– Understanding characters
DISCUSSION PROMPTS
1. After reading about Soujourner Truth, what do you expect to see in this production?
What key points of her life do you expect to witness or hear about in the piece?
2. What other women in history have made waves and changed social norms? What era
did they live in (years?) and what impact did their work have on human rights?
3. Make or draw a costume design for Soujourner based on what you’ve read and images
you’ve seen. How do you think she will look onstage?
Activities After the Performance
DISCUSSION PROMPTS
1. How did the set, lights, costumes, props, and sound help you believe the world and
setting of the play? Discuss all of the visual elements and how they succeeded and
what could have been added to them to make it all more believable.
2. What did you learn about Soujourner Truth that you didn’t know before going to the
production? Did anything surprise you?
3. What did you wish the production would’ve included that you read about prior or knew
about before seeing the show?
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ACTIVITIES
1. Draw or build (in a diorama) a set for the show of your own design. What different
colors or textures would you use that the designers of the production did not? Show
what kind of props you would include. How would you show the different locations
within the play?
2. Paper Dolls! Find a paper doll template (online) and print for students to design
costumes for 2-3 characters from the show. You can also use scraps of fabric to create
swatches and pieces of clothing to glue onto the paper dolls.
Resources
BO O K S
Radical Spirits: Spiritualism and Women’s Rights in Nineteenth-Century America
Ain’t I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism
The Kingdom of Matthias. NY:
Sojourner Truth: Slave, Prophet, Legend.
Sojourner Truth: A Life, a Symbol.
Her Name Was Sojourner Truth
Slave Narratives.
Glorying in Tribulation: The Lifework of Sojourner Truth
Holy Warriors: The Abolitionists and American Slavery
Narrative of Sojourner Truth; a Bondswoman of Olden Time, Emancipated by the New York
Legislature in the Early Part of the Present Century with a History of her Labors and
Correspondence, Drawn from Her Book of Life.
FI L M S
The Narrative of Sojourner Truth
online text of her autobiography, at A Celebration of Women Writers
http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/truth/1850/1850.html
Sojourner Truth - Stamp on Black History profile
http://library.advanced.org/
Charleston Stage: A Woman Called Truth Curriculum Guide
The Sojourner Truth Institute
http://www.sojournertruth.org
Women in History. Sojourner Truth biography
http://www.lkwdpl.org/
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