Local director, actor and historian Tammy Denease brings important — and hidden — Black women to life through theater

Local performing artist, storyteller, actor and playwright Tammy Denease is known for bringing important and hidden Black women in history to life through her one-woman plays throughout the state. She took another big step forward with her directorial debut in “Living History: Elizabeth Keckly — Freedom Tailored by Hand.”

Denease’s play, performed Thursday at the Webb Barn at The Webb-Deane-Stevens Museum in Wethersfield, gave the audience a glimpse into Keckly’s life, as she endured enslavement, physical abuse, separation from her family, the loss of her son and a difficult marriage. She eventually bought her own freedom, as she worked her way into becoming a close friend, confidant and the premiere dressmaker and seamstress for President Abraham Lincoln’s wife, Mary Ann Todd Lincoln.

The cast included Abria Smith as adult Elizabeth, Candis Hilton as the younger Elizabeth, Nizae Aaliyah as the 13th Amendment reader, Andre Keitt and Kelvin Todd, who played the voices of the white slave owners, news reporters and President Lincoln, and Denease as the voices of Mary Todd Lincoln and an enslaved woman.

After the play, Denease talked about what made her bring Keckly’s story to the stage.

“When I pick out my characters, I wanted to do women that you had not heard a lot about,” Denease said.

“Coming from Mississippi, I knew my heritage and I knew my history. … I wanted to talk more about the ones that I knew about and I felt everyone else should know about when I moved here.”

After moving to the Northeast, Denease asked her sixth-grade teacher when they were going to talk about other Black leaders, such as Medgar Evers, Marion Anderson and others, since they were covering only Martin Luther King Jr., Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman.

“She told me I had to go to the library, and that did not bother me because I was a bookworm. I felt really sad for all of the other students who were not into reading the way I was, and it was unacceptable to me. It was at that moment in the sixth grade that I [decided] I would be doing this and just didn’t know it till I got older.”

Some of the women Denease has played include Bessie Coleman, the first internationally licensed pilot in the world, Amistad captive Margu, and Elizabeth “MumBet” Freeman, the first enslaved African American to file and win a freedom suit in Massachusetts. Denease said she chooses Black women’s stories that reflect women within her own family, such as her great-grandmother and grandmother, whose lessons started her on the road to being a historian and researcher.

“Elizabeth Keckly sort of resembles my great-grandmother’s story. She got out of enslavement. She became very well-known in Mississippi [and] was very well-known as a businesswoman. So upon her death, she had the 40 acres, she had six houses … she had a lot of stuff when she passed away … more than most of the white people who were her neighbors at the time. I want to tell the stories of resilience and not just the stories that are seen through one lens that enslaved people were docile, had no ambition and were [not] resilient. That was not the case. That’s why I tell the stories that I tell.”

Denease believes it is that resiliency that makes the Black community who it is today.

“So many people [ask], ‘Why are you always talking about slavery?’ It’s not so much slavery that I’m talking about. I’m talking about the resilient spirit of our ancestors, who were put into a situation they had no control over. But they made the best of it, and because of them, we are,” she said.

“I say to people all the time, ‘You’re very passionate about marching and protesting, but it never lasts.’ You know why? You are doing it off of emotion and not knowledge. That’s the difference. Once you know why things are happening, you have a better understanding of how to go about it. That’s why it’s so important to tell these stories and not look at it as always the past.”

For more information about Tammy Denease and her Hidden Women Stage Company, you can contact her at 1-516-699-8997 or info@hiddenwomen.org.