“Word on Front 250,” Passage Theatre’s annual festival of music, spoken word and solo performances, has one more weekend to run. It ends Sunday, July 12.
The festival’s final weekend offers solo performances by Passage’s former artistic director June Ballinger, its current artistic director, Brishen Miller, the always interesting Zuhairah McGill, and others.
It also includes another performance of “The American History of Philip-AM,” a personal take on the origins of America from geographical, political and social points of view.
“Word on Front 250,” the number referring to the semiquincentennial anniversary — say that seven times fast — of the Declaration of Independence, also has a subtitle, “The Untold America,” which itself has a subscript: “This is the history we’re desperate to tell.”
Ballinger, who presided over Passage Theatre for several creative years — and a theater program at Burlington County Community College before that — returns to present her solo show, “Crone Barrier,” about what happens to a particular woman when she is taken, not necessarily voluntarily, to a women’s sexual empowerment workshop.
The Virgin Mary and an individual’s sense of power figure into the story, which runs at 5:30 p.m. Friday, July 10, and 3:30 p.m. Saturday, July 11.
An August Wilson piece that has become popular since the playwright’s untimely death at age 60, “How I Learned What I Learned,” will be performed by Marvin Bell at 8:30 p.m. Friday, July 10.
Theodore A. Harris, who worked with another playwright in the American pantheon, Amiri Baraka, presents “Our Flesh of Flames,” with collages by Harris and captions by Baraka, at 2 p.m. Saturday, July 11.
The versatile and always riveting actress Zuhairah McGill, a staple of Philadelphia theater for decades, appears as the title character in “Sojourner,” a play by Richard Lamonte Pierce.
The show chronicles Sojourner Truth, who was born into slavery, became an abolitionist and women’s rights activist, and developed friendships with two other major figures of her time, Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass.
“Sojourner” runs at 5 p.m. Saturday, July 11, and Sunday, July 12.
Brishen Miller performs his own play, “The Return of Travelin’ Bill,” about a man who doesn’t stay in one place too long, at 2 p.m. Sunday, July 12.
The American History of Philip-AM” returns for a final festival performance at 3:40 p.m. Sunday, July 12.
Several festival performances took place before this issue’s publication date.
“Losing My Religion” by Laura Ekstrand, who tells a personal tale of being an observant Catholic in her youth, though not in the present, was presented Thursday, July 2.
The Poor Righteous Teachers, a popular Trenton singing group, performed Friday, July 3, in Mill Hill Park, right next to Mill Hill Playhouse.
“In Between,” Ibrahim Miari’s piece about the complexities and contradictions of having an Israeli-Palestinian identity, was presented Sunday, July 5.
“The American History of Philip-AM” was also presented Sunday, July 5.
The festival also has included several performances tied to America’s 250th anniversary, most notably selections from the new musical “The Crossing,” about George Washington’s significant Christmas night crossing of the Delaware River to attack British and Hessian troops encamped near Trenton.
“The Crossing,” subtitled “A Revolutionary New Musical,” was presented Thursday, July 2, and Friday, July 3. The musical is being produced in partnership with TenCrucialDays.org and was conceived from the belief that history is not something we leave behind, but something we continually step into with courage, clarity and heart.
The July performances were workshop presentations. “The Crossing” is expected to debut at the Trenton War Memorial in December 2026.
The musical commemorates the December 1776 surprise attack on enemy troops, an event that changed the course of the Revolutionary War and gave the Americans a first and desperately needed victory.
The 10 days referred to in the musical’s title are Dec. 25, 1776, to Jan. 3, 1777, the period when the newly independent Americans and British forces fought on battlefields from Trenton to Princeton. Passage Theatre’s Mill Hill Playhouse is near the site of the Trenton battles. The story is told by diverse, often overlooked voices.
The piece, with book and lyrics by Jason Huza and music by John Allen Watts, shows potential. From the first-act excerpts seen July 2, “The Crossing” looks at Washington’s critical maneuver from the point of view of ordinary 18th-century Americans who participate in the Revolution as soldiers, volunteers and advocates. Various motives for backing the Revolution, or abstaining from the fight for American independence, are presented.
These passages impress, but they need more texture and fleshing out to be totally effective.
Scenes with these characters, mostly New Jersey citizens drawn to a cause their colony had not fully embraced as a political entity, are juxtaposed with telling sequences from George Washington’s headquarters on the Pennsylvania side of the Delaware River and bits of Thomas Paine pontificating or inspiring.
Huza’s script could use some honing on historical matters. Characters muse about how their hometowns, Orange and Cranbury, New Jersey, got their names. It’s easy enough to clarify. The naming of Orange is obvious to anyone familiar with British history — hint: William and Mary, the Glorious Revolution, 1688 — and the character from Cranbury is on the right track. Any reference can tell you how close.
The portrait of Thomas Paine, he of “Common Sense” and later “The Rights of Man,” is passable in terms of theatrical license, although Paine was hardly the gentlemanly man of letters depicted.
Thank you, thank you, John Allen Watts, for signaling after the first scene of “The Crossing” that the volume needed to be softened. Sound designers in general pitch amplification way too high — way, way too high. I had to cup my ears to catch dialogue and lyrics in the opening sequences. The sound was eating the actors’ voices. Watts signaled with his hands that it needed to be cut down a notch or 12.
Tickets for “Word on Front 250” can be obtained by visiting passagetheatre.org.
