HOW TO GO:
What: “Safe House,” a world premiere by playwright Keith Josef Adkins
When: Through Nov. 15. Performances take place at 7:30 p.m. Tuesdays and Wednesdays, 8 p.m. Thursdays and Fridays, 4 p.m. and 8 p.m. Saturdays, and 2 p.m. and 7 p.m. Sundays.
Free post-show Meet the Artists programs allow audiences to interact with cast members and others associated with the production will be offered at 2 p.m. today; 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 29; 2 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 9; and 8 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 13.
SAFE HOUSE will be audio described for those with visual impairments at 4 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 8, and signed for persons with hearing impairments at 2 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 9. The show is appropriate for adults and older teenage audiences.
Tickets: Prices are $30 and up with teen and student tickets are $30. On Sunday College Night, tickets to all 7 p.m. Sunday performances are $10 with a valid student ID. Student tickets are just $15 on the day of the show for all other performances.
Behind the Scenes: The Playhouse has teamed with the Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County to display a behind-the-scenes look at “Safe House” in the atrium of its Main Library downtown. The display will feature set and costume renderings, as well as research about free people of color in 19th-century Kentucky. It will be on view beginning in early October as part of the library’s activities recognizing Family History Month.
Call the Playhouse Box Office at 513-421-3888 (toll-free in Ohio, Kentucky and Indiana at 800-582-3208) or visit www.cincyplay.com.
Though he now lives in New York’s Harlem, Keith Josef Adkins has never forgotten his roots.
That’s particularly evident in his new play, “Safe House,” currently on stage at Cincinnati’s Playhouse in the Park. The production, a world premiere, runs through Nov. 15 and was originally was commissioned by Atlanta’s Alliance Theatre.
The drama centers around two brothers — one who is ambitious and controlling, the other who is free-spirited and resentful of the many restrictions his family members have faced after they were caught trying to help a slave escape. It takes place in the antebellum South in a time when even “free” blacks were considered second-class citizens — discouraged or prohibited from owning or renting land, voting or holding office.
In Kentucky, where this particular family lives, free blacks faced limited mobility, lacked the right to privacy and could be sold into servitude for defaulting on their taxes or failing to pay fines. They lived in constant fear of kidnapping, and were required to carry papers with them at all times to verify their freedom.
About the playwright
Adkins, 47, is a Wright State grad who spent a month in Cincinnati working on the new play. He said the story, which is being fully staged for the first time, is loosely based on his own family’s history in this region.
“I didn’t write it for the Playhouse, so it’s just amazing that they are producing it and that it’s about my family’s experiences in this area,” he said. His great-great grandmother — and her family — were born in Wilmington and she grew up in Xenia. Some family members attended Wilberforce University.
“My family lived in this region since 1780s as free people of color, and they at one point—in the 1840s — were shoemakers, a father and several sons and a daughter,” he explained. “And another part of family were agents on the underground railroad. So the play is about a family of shoemakers and they have big dreams of becoming real businessmen in the industry, but the other thing they are doing is helping fugitives get to the country of Liberia.”
Adkins said he has always been fascinated by favoritism and rivalry within families and that becomes the conflict among the characters in “Safe House.”
“My maternal grandfather and his brother were always at odds,” Adkins said. “They were both considered good-looking and extremely intelligent, but they feuded constantly over money, life choices and only the stars know what else.”
Another theme is racial and social loyalty among African-Americans. Adkins, who still has relatives in Dayton and Cincinnati, said he grew up in a family that encouraged individuality within a black community that thrived on communal survival and identity.
“If one’s personal survival was threatened by a group’s demand or someone else’s handicap then one was encouraged to break free from those demands,” he remembers. “I figured if my family was complicated now, they had to be complicated in the 19th century.”
His early career
Adkins has been interested in writing since childhood.
“My family in Cincinnati were always great storytellers,” he said. “I won a Young Author’s Award in first grade for a story called “The Silly Puppet.”
But when he entered college at Wright State, he assumed that if he wanted to be a writer, journalism was the thing you were “supposed” to do.
So, although he took some creative writing classes at Wright State, he studied broadcast journalism and interned at a local television station. After that internship, he realized he didn’t want to be a journalist and turned to acting.
At age 21, Adkins moved to New York City, then to San Francisco where he became active in the spoken word poetry community.
“That allowed me to write and perform, and a novelist friend I met there said my poems were like monologues and dared me to write a play!” he said.
He fell in love with the “collaborative spirit” and earned his MFA in playwriting from the University of Iowa’s Playwrights Workshop.
“It was creating story and then having people embody the story,” he said. “And I loved the collaborative effort of other people’s contributions and the immediacy of the audience.”
He has since written more than 15 plays.
“The stories are always different, but the themes are similar,” Adkins said. “I keep writing about individuality versus community, about individual families trying to sustain their dignity and freedom.”
About the Author