Put Your Trust in God and Keep Your Powder Dry

A long one-act play based on the lives of three women with extraordinary stories and an unusual connection. In 1862, during the Civil War, Sarah Lockwood Pardee married William Wirt Winchester, heir to the Winchester Repeating Arms Company, which was booming in wartime. After the death of her child and husband to rare diseases, Sarah visited a medium and was told she was being haunted by the spirits of soldiers killed by Winchester guns. She was to move west and begin building a home without pause or she too would be killed. The result of the 38 years of ceaseless construction is the Winchester Mystery Mansion, a sprawling and senseless house supposedly designed by these spirits. Emma Edmonds was a Canadian woman who managed to join the Union army disguised as a man. Later, she rose the ranks and became a spy, several times infiltrating the rebel army disguised as an African American male slave. The third woman is based on the account of an escaped slave whose name has been lost but her story recorded. With her child, she crossed the icy Ohio River, was chased by dogs and shot at, but managed to save her child.

Put Your Trust in God and Keep Your Powder Dry is experimental in form and based on several different, and sometimes contradicting accounts of these women, imagining a way in which their histories may interweave through echoes of violence.

Winner: 2010 Mario Fratti-Fred Newman Political Play Contest

3w