Emerging playwright Matthew Lopez and Northwestern University professor E. Patrick Johnson tackle the subject of the Civil War and Jewish slave owners in 19th-century America in this conversation. Lopez’s play The Whipping Man, for which the writer earned the John Gassner Playwriting Award from the Outer Critics Circle, receives its Chicago premiere at Northlight Theatre in January 2013. When Caleb, a wounded Confederate soldier returns to his family’s home at the end of the Civil War, he finds it in ruins and abandoned by all but two former slaves. United by their Jewish faith, the three men celebrate a Seder while wrestling with a shared past they can’t escape—and secrets they can no longer hide. Slavery and war, they discover, warp even good men’s souls.
This program is presented in partnership with Northlight Theatre.
