Austin theater reframes story of Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson

The Austin regional premiere of Suzan-Lori Parks' play-within-a-play, Sally & Tom , opens this week at Zach Theatre . The Pulitzer Prize winner's dramedy about Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson runs from July 22 through August 23 at The Kleberg at Zach. Directed by Dave Steakley , the theater's producing artistic director, the play follows a scrappy downtown New York theater company staging a historical drama about Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson, the nation's third president, infamously enslaved Hemings at his Monticello estate and had a "relationship" with her, if we can call it that. She was just 14 and he 41; the two had seven children together. The fictional company's own lives keep bleeding into the story they're telling onstage, especially for the play's writer and director, a couple in an interracial relationship. In this meta production, two plays are running at once: the historical drama the fictional company calls The Pursuit of Happiness and the modern-day story of the people putting it on. "What's on stage begins to inform what's happening at home, and these roles begin to converge," Steakley says. In the play, resident playwright Luce has written the historical drama at the center of the show. Steakley says the impulse behind it, and behind Parks' own writing, is to hand the story back to people history left out. "It's also wanting to give voice to Sally, her brother James, their sister Mary, and the Hemings family, who perhaps have not had agency or voice in the story of Thomas Jefferson," Steakley says. Steakley and Parks have been friends for more than 30 years, since meeting at a small theater conference early in Steakley's career. He has since directed several of Parks' plays at Zach, and he knew he wanted to work on this one the moment he saw it at New York's Public Theater, where it premiered. However, it wasn't originally his intention to be the director. "Originally [Suzan-Lori Parks] was set to direct it, and then her schedule became complicated because she taught at Oxford this summer... I was going to hire a Black director for this show, but she asked me to do it," Steakley says. "Part of that is just our long friendship and relationship, but she also knows how much I care, and that I'm going to take care of her baby. Which she's right — I'm gonna take care of her baby." He adds that since starting rehearsals, conversations with the cast have gone somewhere he hasn't yet in his career. "I've been at Zach 35 years and I've never had as many deep, heart-wrenching conversations as we have experienced as a company on this play," he says. Steakley credits much of that to assistant director Yunina Barbour-Payne . Barbour-Payne, who teaches at University of Virginia near Monticello and studies the site's evolving relationship with its own history, has been a full partner in shaping the production, says Steakley. She's been leading the cast through various exercises and conversations to tap into the play's many powerful messages and layers. Steakley hopes audiences leave wrestling with the same contradictions the cast has. "It's horrible, and it's beautiful," he says of Jefferson's legacy, and in many ways, our country today. "'We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal,'" Steakley says. "That's an idea that we wrestle with so hard still." The Austin cast includes Angelique Archer as Sally and present-day Luce, Jonathan Flippo as Jefferson and Mike, Olivia D. Dawson as Mary and Maggie, and Hollis Edwards III as James and Kwame. Public performances for Sally & Tom begin July 22. The official opening celebration is on July 30th, when Suzan-Lori Parks herself will be in attendance and stay after for a talkback. Sally & Tom is for audiences aged 12 and older. From a recent press release, this play "explores themes of race, power, sex, and history. [It] includes mature language, depictions of slavery, and discussions of sexual relationships that may be disturbing to some audiences." Tickets (starting at $28) are available online or from Zach's box office at 512-476-0541 x1.