COLORED SILK: A CIVIL WAR ODYSSEY Comes to Rochester Fringe Festival 2024

Echoes of Our Ancestors African American History & Song will present Colored Silk: A Civil War Odyssey, a play upon the life of Elizabeth Keckley, formerly enslaved artisan whose skillfulness led to the White House as Mary Todd Lincoln's dressmaker. School of The Arts, (45 Prince Street, Rochester, New York) will present two performances September 14 at 12 noon, and September 15 at 1:30 pm. Tickets are on sale now at rochesterfringe.com. $25 general admission. Seats can also be purchased at School of the Arts Box Office, in person at Rochester Fringe Office Main & Gibbs Streets or by phone (585) 957-9837. The 13th annual Rochester Fringe Festival will take place from  Tuesday, September 10 to Saturday, September 21 at various venues and locations throughout the city.

Elizabeth Keckley (1818-1907) was born into slavery in Virginia. The daughter of a seamstress, young Elizabeth's exceptional sewing skills were undeniable and led to her eventual self-emancipation. Moving north, she  established a dressmaking business in Washington, D.C. and was commissioned as exclusive designer for Mary Todd Lincoln. During her four years in the White House, Elizabeth forged a close bond with Mrs. Lincoln, and was privy to the everyday lives of the president and his wife. Her recollection of the Lincoln household was recorded in a book she published  in 1868 after the Civil War ended with President Lincoln's untimely death. Behind The Scenes:Thirty Years A Slave and Four Years in the White House provided a bird's eye view of the Lincolns and illustrated Elizabeth Keckley's “odyssey” as she rose from enslavement to entrepreneur. 

Playwright Tami Tyree based her dramatization on Madame Keckley's narrative, but extends our understanding of her life beyond the pages of the book. Colored Silk: A Civil War Odyssey refers more to the intimate life of a woman fighting to be the architect of her own destiny. Tyree's story, and portrayal of the protagonist is a one-woman characterization which supplants the gaps in her published pages. Ms. Tyree's play takes place in 1883. Mrs. Keckley has assembled friends and neighbors in a meeting hall to announce she is “closing up shop.” She also reads from a hardcover book which is a follow-up to the 1868 publication as she divulges the restrained truths about her  marriage, her son, dilemmas, controversies, and tragedy in the midst of, and because of —the Civil War. While sipping tea and with an occasional song, Tami Tyree as Madame Keckley introduces the Lincolns, the Jefferson Davis family and Frederick Douglass. We also hear an authentic letter written to President Lincoln from a soldier in the United States Colored Troops. With prosperity and success at hand, Elizabeth mapped out a fanciful life for her son George, but his fate is unfortunately tangled in the whirlwind of war. No publisher has accepted this manuscript, so the audience becomes the sounding board as she licks the wounds of rape, unwanted pregnancy, taking you along a stormy and ultra-sensitive path from south to Midwest to Washington, DC— when “Lizzie's” painstaking  beauty collided with America during the ugliest time in its history.

Tami Tyree is also  producer of Colored Silk:A Civil War Odyssey. Ms. Tyree, a theater graduate of Howard University, is a singer/actress who formed a production company in 2008 called Echoes of Our Ancestors African American History & Song. Its mission is to present black history as performance; utilizing her skills as a researcher, writer, singer, lecturer, and actress. Echoes of Our Ancestors creates concerts, lectures, workshops, historical outings and literature. Based in Harlem, NYC, its audiences range from school age children to senior adults in carefully crafted and curated experiences. The heartbeat of the program lies in its ability to educate, activate, entertain and provide truthfulness in telling the story of black Americans' earliest existence. https://tamiechoesofourancestors.com. 

This is the first time Tami Tyree or her work has been presented at a Fringe festival. Colored Silk:A Civil War Odyssey  made its NYC Off-Broadway premiere at The Players Theatre November, 2023. Broadway producer Ken Davenport called it “A One Woman tour de force!”  Iterations of the play were performed at the North Carolina Historical Society (Tryon Palace) in February of 2023 as a result of the initial offering for The Association for the Study of African American Life and History (ASALH).  Ms. Tyree was able to draw upon her lifetime passion and proficiency in fashion merchandising; finding similarities in Mrs. Keckley's experiences coincided with her now-shuttered career on New York's 5th Avenue. As playwright, this is the second script she's produced, and she's proud of her return to theater as a generative artist: a joyous reunification of all things and experiences she loves.

The 12-day Rochester Fringe Festival is the largest multidisciplinary event in New York State. Since the festival's inception in 2012, nearly 670,000 people have attended more than 4,500 performances by regional, national, and International Artists from emerging to superstar. From drama to dance, comedy to children's entertainment, music to magic, and so much more, this internationally-known powerhouse encourages creative expression while nurturing  the artistic process, all while supplying new audiences to established and emerging arts venues. The Rochester Fringe Festival  strives to be diverse and inclusive, and to stimulate downtown Rochester both culturally and economically. 

MORE ABOUT FRINGE FESTIVALS

In 1947, eight theater groups showed up - uninvited - to perform at the newly established Edinburgh International Festival in Scotland. Although not listed in the official program, the groups performed anyway, at venues they found for themselves. The following year a Scottish journalist coined the term “festival fringe” to describe these non-curated shows  that began turning up annually. The Edinburgh Fringe is now the world's largest arts festival and the third largest event after the Olympics and the World Cup. Today, there are more than 250 Fringe Festivals worldwide, with nearly 50 in the United States. The Rochester Fringe was the first in upstate New York. 

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