Previews: Bipoc Play Reading Series to Feature LeAnne Howe at Straz' Teco Theatre

To close out the free four-part program featuring local and national plays and musicals of BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and people of color) playwrights is LeAnne Howe's Savage Conversations at Straz' TECO Theatre on May 28.

Howe is an enrolled citizen of the Choctaw Nation whose writing primarily deals with American Indian experiences. In 2012, she was honored with the Lifetime Achievement Award by the Native Writers' Circle of the Americas and received the 2012 USA Ford Fellowship in the Literature category.

Savage Conversations centers on the story of Mary Todd Lincoln. Using historical facts and creative storytelling, Howe delves into the tragic events following the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln.

Through the lens of a fiercely imaginative and reflective dialogue, Howe masterfully blurs the lines between historical facts and creative storytelling.

In Savage Conversations, the President's largest mass execution of thirty-eight Dakota nightly haunts the First Lady. Although she has never met an American Indian, grappling with grief, she claims that a Savage Indian enters her bedroom, slashes her face and scalp, and is committed to Bellevue Place Sanitarium.

Howe said she was deeply affronted by the stereotype that American Indians were dangerous and savages that tortured and scalped white women were pervasive during that era. She came across the First Lady's insanity file and was inspired to write. Mary Todd Lincoln represents how American Indians were viewed most of the 19th and 20th centuries.

Howe explained, "It's about Mary Todd Lincoln and the American Indian that she invented as the ghost torturing her. It's based on historical facts. This is what she said in her diary. This is what she told everyone - that an American Indian was cutting out her one of her eyes and sewing it open every night, as well as scalping her and cutting a bone out of her cheek, and that happened, she said, every night. In the morning, the savage Indian put it back. That is part of the insanity file that she testified to in court, which is why she went to Bellevue and was incarcerated there. The play is centered around the conversation between Mary Todd Lincoln and the savage Indian with whom she has this affinity and relationship."

When asked who should attend the play presentation, Howe replied, "Everyone. Because it's a show about the relations between white people and American Indians and how fraught they were.... Still are. To me, it's a piece of history that most people don't know. While hundreds of books have been written about Mary Todd Lincoln, only one I know of that came out in the 90s even addressed the insanity file. The history of the Lincolns has been whitewashed again and again, and they're iconic. Everyone knows she was crazy, but they don't know why."

Howe believes her research has proved the First Lady suffering from Munchausen drugged her two children with laudanum, causing their death. Her third child escaped as he spent his time with the President.

"She loved the attention she got every time a son died. She was beside herself in an ecstatic kind of frenzy. The staff called her the hellcat because she was always looking for ways to get more attention."

The historians Howe worked with agree that her theory makes logical sense.

"She was trying in her own way to be a killer in the same way that Abraham Lincoln was a killer of American Indians. The largest mass hanging in the United States was held under Lincoln. He killed Dakota Indians and didn't know whether they were innocent or innocent. They never took that into consideration. It's a shameful piece of American history under the Lincoln administration that few people have spent time thinking about. The play is a continuation of that event, only the reverse that is happening. Mary Todd Lincoln does this only to compete with President Lincoln's killing of Indians."

On Sunday, May 28 is Savage Conversation at Straz' TECO Theatre. All play readings will be FREE and held at 2:30 PM. in the TECO Theater. Reservations are required by calling 813.229.STAR (7827) or visiting the website at https://cloud.broadwayworld.com/rec/ticketclick.cfm?fromlink=2243013®id=101&articlelink=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.strazcenter.org%2Fevents%2F2223-season%2Fvoices-of-the-community%2Fplay-reading-series?utm_source=BWW2022&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=article&utm_content=bottombuybutton1.