From left, Christopher L. Brown, Philip Dray, and Rosalind Remer
On Saturday, October 26, following the 2:00 PM matinee performance of FRANKLINLAND, the hilarious new comedy by Lloyd Suh, everyone is encouraged to stay for a talkback discussion with historians Christopher L. Brown, Philip Dray, and Rosalind Remer about the cultural, historical, and scientific background of the play.
FRANKLINLAND is the story of growing up as the only son of Benjamin Franklin: the greatest scientific mind in the world, inventor of the lightning rod and the urinary catheter and the glass harmonica and bifocal glasses and, oh yeah, in his spare time the United States of America.
The audience will have the opportunity to ask questions and join the discussion.
FRANKLINLAND, written by Lloyd Suh and directed by Chika Ike, is the Fall 2024 mainstage production of the EST/Sloan Project, EST’s partnership with the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation to develop new plays “exploring the world of science and technology,” an initiative now in its twenty-fifth year.
About the Panelists
Christopher L. Brown
Christopher L. Brown is professor of history at Columbia University. He is a historian of Britain and the British empire, principally in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, with special emphasis on the comparative history of slavery and abolition, and with secondary interests in the Atlantic Slave Trade and the Age of Revolutions. His current research centers on the history of European experience on the African coast at the height of the Atlantic slave trade, and continues early commitments to the rise and fall of slavery in the British Empire. His published work has received prizes in four distinct fields of study – American History, British History, Atlantic History, and the history of Slavery, Abolition, and Resistance. Completed projects include Moral Capital: Foundations of British Abolitionism (University of North Carolina Press) and, with Philip D. Morgan, Arming Slaves: Classical Times to the Modern Age (Yale University Press). He has written as well for The Nation, The New York Times, and the London Review of Books, among other outlets.
Philip Dray
Philip Dray is the author of several books about the cultural and political history of the United States, including Stealing God’s Thunder: Benjamin Franklin’s Lightning Rod and the Invention of America; Capitol Men: The Story of Reconstruction Through the Lives of the First Black Congressmen; and At the Hands of Persons Unknown: The Lynching of Black America. He also published There is Power in a Union: The Epic Story of Labor in America and A Lynching at Port Jervis: Race and Redemption in the Gilded Age. He has received the Southern Critics Book Circle Award for Non-Fiction, the Robert F. Kennedy Book Prize, and was a Pulitzer Prize Finalist. He teaches in the Journalism + Design Department at Eugene Lang College of Liberal Arts at The New School, and lives in Brooklyn.
About the Moderator
Rosalind Remer
Rosalind Remer was Executive Director of the Benjamin Franklin Tercentenary, a federal commission to celebrate the 300th anniversary of Franklin’s birth. She is Senior Vice Provost at Drexel University for Collections and Exhibitions, and the founding Executive Director of the Lenfest Center for Cultural Partnerships at Drexel. Remer is Chair of the Board of Managers of the Lenfest Institute for Journalism, the nonprofit owner of The Philadelphia Inquirer, and serves as a member of Board of Advisors for the UCLA Luskin Center for History and Policy, vice chair of the American Antiquarian Society’s Council, and a member of the Independence Historical Trust board of directors.
FRANKLINLAND began previews on October 9 and runs through November 3 at EST. You can purchase tickets here.
