In January, Willie Phillips of the Laguna Woods African American Heritage Club bought 104 tickets to the play “The Spirit of Harriet Tubman” and chartered two buses to take residents to the one-night presentation in Cerritos.
Written by and starring Leslie McCurdy, “The Spirit of Harriet Tubman” is a one-woman play based on the life of the abolitionist and “conductor” of the Underground Railroad who freed hundreds of slaves in the 1800s.
Now, thanks to a collaboration between the AAHC and the Community Bridge Builders, McCurdy will present her award-winning creation at the Performing Arts Center this Saturday, May 31, at 4 p.m.
“Harriet Tubman was a genius; she was spiritual, she had visions. Yet genius gets lost,” McCurdy said. “Now we need to use our intellect to push our history forward again.”
From 1850 to 1860, Tubman was estimated to have freed at least 70 slaves by taking them north to Maryland from the South via the Underground Railroad – not a literal railroad but a network of secret routes, hiding places and safe houses.
With the assistance of other abolitionists, she also helped fugitive slaves find routes to safety and freedom and, during the Civil War, led a raid that freed more than 700 slaves.
Tubman claimed no casualties for her group.
“I never ran my train off the track, and I never lost a passenger,” she reportedly said of her mission.
McCurdy will embody Tubman as she has done for 20 years: on a bare stage with only a trunk filled with costumes to help her recreate the tumultuous stages of the activist’s life, starting as an abused young slave and ending as a 90-year-old legend and symbol of freedom.
McCurdy recently spoke by phone of her transition from aspiring dancer to actor to Tubman performer after fracturing a hip in a fall as she was on her way to join a dance company in New York.
“I started writing after I tripped, and fell into acting when a friend took me to audition for a one-woman play,” she recalled.
Having made the cut, she started embodying Tubman from a script by Karen Meadow Jones in 1992 and 1993.
When her run ended, McCurdy decided to tour the play on her own. But after she also edited the script into a version for school audiences at the producer’s behest, she received a cease-and-desist order from the playwright’s attorney.
“I was not to utter another word about Harriet Tubman,” she recalled.
Turning her initial “now what?” into inspiration, McCurdy wrote her own one-woman play in three weeks, memorized it in days and took the show on the road.
“That play was coming right from the inside of me,” she recalled. “Now, when I perform, I channel Harriet by asking her spirit to help me use her words – note the title of the play.”
McCurdy first heard about Tubman when she was in the fifth grade in Ontario, Canada
“I was a tomboy and liked to play a lot of boys’ games. To me, Harriet was a woman who did men’s things better than men,” she said.
In Canada, she said, “there was not a lot of talk of Black people, and some still believed that slaves were heathens who had needed to be civilized.”
McCurdy also wrote “Harriet is My Hero” as an accompaniment to be performed for K-2 students.
“That play shows kids the characteristics that made Harriet a good hero and which they might want to emulate if they want to be heroes as well,” she said. “Ragdolls and marionettes help tell the story and illustrate the skills that Harriet had to learn from childhood into old age.”
Among her female heroes, McCurdy cites her mother and her aunt, former Vice President Kamala Harris, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Black, and Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah, the newly elected president of Namibia.
“Black women will save the world,” McCurdy said. “As an energy force, they are an impetus for a new age.”
She plans to perform “The Spirit of Harriet Tubman” until 2027 and then perhaps substitute another actor into her role.
“The thought of not doing the show breaks my heart, so it’s still perhaps a no,” she said.
Meanwhile, McCurdy has portrayed Billie Holiday in “Lady Ain’t Singing No Blues,” a play that gives insight into the singer’s turbulent life. She pays tribute to African American women whose visions bring change in “Things My Foresisters Saw,” and she produced “The Darktown Strutters Ball,” a documentary focused on the contributions of Black performers throughout history.
Phillips, the vice president of the African American Heritage Club, hopes for more culture- and history-infused productions at the PAC like “The Spirit of Harriet Tubman.”
“There’s nothing wrong with music, concerts, bands, comics and parties,” he said. “However, we would like to see other types of entertainment – plays, ballets, documentaries. History in motion, if you will, real shows about the lives and contributions of real people that have been and are making real positive contributions to our society at large.”
“The Spirit of Harriet Tubman” will be staged at the Performing Arts Center on Saturday, May 31, at 4 p.m. Tickets are $20, $30 and $40, available at the box office or online at tickets.lagunawoodsvillage.com. For more information, email Community Bridge Builders at lwcommunitybrigebuilders@gmail.com.