Mordecai Historic Park, Raleigh
Various times, $15, www.raleighnc.gov
This interactive, harrowing historical performance is staged each year by MOJOAA Performing Arts on the grounds of one of North Carolina’s largest formerly slave-powered enterprises, the Mordecai Plantation, located less than a mile from the state capitol. Over the course of an hour-long performance, costumed actors “guide and thwart” audiences during a walkingand occasionally, running and hidingtour of the buildings and grounds of Mordecai Historic Park. Why? In this show, you’re cast as one of the enslaved people who were forced to work on these lands until the late 1800s, and now you’re trying to escape, especially because historical records indicate that Henry Mordecai “was not kind” to his slaves. In Escape to Freedom, vividly witness and participate in the history behind the plaques, if you can bear it.
