Événement

"What Kind of Love: An Evening with Thomas Jefferson & Sally Hemings

"What Kind of Love: An Evening with Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings at Montecello"

This evening's cabaret program features a dramatized concert version performed by Alvin Smithson and friends, of a brand-new musical, What Kind of Love, book and lyrics by PJ Thiessen, and music by Alvin Smithson and PJ Thiessen. The musical is based on history and the oral stories of Jefferson, Hemings, and Woodson families telling of Thomas Jefferson and his slave Sally Hemings. What Kind of Love presents this story through the eyes of Jefferson's slave Sally Hemings and Jefferson's eldest child Patsy Jefferson. Ever since Fawn Brodie's book, Thomas Jefferson: An Intimate Portrait exploded on the market in bicentennial 1976, the subject of an intimate relationship between Thomas and Sally has created wonder and controversy inspiring TV movies, films, plays, DNA testing, mock trials, and books, both supporting and negating the claim. The heated controversy midst overwhelming circumstantial evidence supporting it inspired PJ and Alvin to write this musical begging the question, "What kind of love will it take to set things right?"

The program also presents instrumental music of the 18th and early 19th century that a visitor to Monticello might have heard in Jefferson's day.