A man escaped slavery by mailing himself to freedom. His story is coming to Pensacola.

At a time of social upheaval, Mehr Mansuri wanted to create a play that could help move the country forward into a better future.

As the co-founder and artistic director of the Children's Theater Company in New York, Mansuri believes the theater is a unifier for people of all backgrounds to learn about one another.

"We believe theater is itself an empathy-building tool of all of us looking into the lives that we've never lived," Mansuri said. "Looking through that small window into another person's life and maybe having a new view about it."

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She had trouble finding a story where Black and white people came together to make sacrifices for one another. That is until she came across a book about Henry "Box" Brown, a 19th century slave who escaped to freedom by mailing himself in a wooden crate from Virginia to abolitionists in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

In 2008, Mansuri and the Children's Theater Company put pen to paper and created "Henry Box Brown: A Musical Journey."

Now, the show will be presented at 1 and 7 p.m. June 17 and 18 at the Jean & Paul Amos Performance Studio at Pensacola State College. The play is sponsored by the Equity Project Alliance, a collective of Escambia County citizens working to create a more equitable and diverse community.

Mansuri did not want a typical musical of the cliché enslaved Black person without any agency or self realization. When she learned about Brown, she was also introduced to the extensive history of slave narratives through verbal transcriptions and voice recordings in the Library of Congress. She realized people have looked at American slavery as a folklore and not fact and knew that it was her responsibility as co-founder of the theater company to take Brown's story and bring it to life.

"We decided to just take his narrative and really fill it out with the music of its time, meaning spirituals, arguably the foundation of Western music, is the negro spiritual which is American music," Mansuri said. "We're not really trying to create a Disney production of Henry Brown's life. We're looking at a culture of music, and all these songs and all these spirituals are the soundtrack of his life."

Theater co-founder Eric Dozier works as a historian and consultant on the play and makes sure the story is told with truth, integrity and respect.

Dozier is a cultural activist and anti-racism educator who has done workshops, speaking events and a TEDx presentation talking about the power of music in promoting healing and social justice.

In his current studies at the University of Tasmania, he looks at Black gospel music outside of the context of the Black church. This means looking at Black choirs all around the world, how they perform, the impact of the music on local cultures and ultimately what benefits other people derive from participating in Black American culture.

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"My purpose of taking this particular music, and going and doing these workshops with people all over the world is so that they can actually learn who Black people are," Dozier said. "Otherwise, they're going to get signals from the news, films, American TV or any of those things that have not necessarily been favorable when it comes to depicting the lived experiences of Black people."

The play has been lauded by critics and viewers, and was awarded a "Best Musical" nomination at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, the largest arts festival in the world, in 2018 and 2019. It has also received five star reviews in major international media.

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The play's organizers also applied for a grant and with the collaboration of National Endowment for the Arts, New York University's Office of Government and Community Affairs and the Bahá'í Office of Education and Schools received the Henry Box Brown Community Mobilization Grant. This allowed them to perform for schools in communities that don't get arts education, theater education or access to Broadway shows as easily as others.

Why the play is coming to Pensacola

In 2019, Mansuri met Julian MacQueen during a Bahá'í conference in Pensacola. MacQueen is founder and CEO of Innisfree Hotels. MacQueen's wife, Kim, completed her doctorate in art and spirituality and conducts conferences on how the arts can inspire and educate others.

Julian MacQueen was so moved he started to use business differently as a tool for inclusion and enlightenment and wanted to bring other business owners together to show how the arts are a way to the heart and soul.

He realized Mansuri's play was aligned with conversations happening in Pensacola about equity and a new group he helped create, the Equity Project Alliance, which works to confront systemic racism and bring about conversations regarding transformative thinking, unity and equity.

MacQueen knew he had to bring the play and the theater company to Pensacola.

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"My hope and our hope of EPA is that this will initiate more conversations and that we will be able to use it as a stimulus to encourage schools in areas of Pensacola to engage in theater, and use theater as a tool to train our children on understanding that the world is a big place. And inspiration comes in every shape and size and color and, and country," MacQueen said.

Brian Wyer, president and CEO of the Gulf Coast Minority Chamber of Commerce, said bringing the play to Pensacola provides a different perspective of the challenges slavery had on the Black family. For Wyer, it is also a treat for the Pensacola community since there are not many Broadway style plays coming to this area.

"We (EPA) bring up topics that people normally don't talk about. So this is a new different way of putting a spin on having empathy for people and having compassion," Wyer said. "So you want to make sure like anything you do, you diversify. You don't want to keep doing the same things and this is a different way of having that same message carried out."

The play has received enough buzz that Tony-winning producers have asked Mansuri and the theater company to make changes to bring it to Broadway. Now the play has gone from an afterschool musical, to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, to now going to Broadway in about 18 months.

When Mansuri thinks about Pensacola, she thinks about the faith that is within the community here and knows people will feel the same spiritual connection that Brown felt when escaping to his freedom.

"This was a man of faith. He went in that box on faith totally because it was a coffin more than a box, and he came out with faith. But I think this is also a story about faith," Matsuri said. "And I can assure you Pensacola has people of faith in it, we can find people to come to this story."

To buy tickets, visit m.bpt.me/event/5452192.

This article originally appeared on Pensacola News Journal: "Henry Box Brown: A Musical Journey" coming to Pensacola State College