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Shays' Rebellion Turns Local History into Performance Piece

Turning history into theatre--The cast of Shays' Rebellion, including (left to right) Danielle O'Connell '00, Devin Dickerson '00, Sara Glassman '01, and Shannon Trainor '98, will bring their interpretation of an incident from Massachusetts' past to the stage November 20-23.

Visiting lecturer in theatre Robbie McCauley has taken the basic story of Shays' rebellion, an armed uprising of small farmers in Western Massachusetts in 1786, and turned it into a multicultural performance piece. Shays' Rebellion will be performed by a cast of fifteen Five College students November 20-23 (see calendar for details).

The historical rebellion happened shortly after the American revolution, when a British boycott of American goods caused an economic slump that left many farmers unable to pay their land taxes. A group of impoverished farmers, led by Daniel Shays, protested and had temporary success at preventing towns from levying taxes, but was ultimately defeated by Massachusetts troops.

"This is not a reenactment, it's performance theater with Shays' rebellion at its center and other material built around it," says McCauley, whose more than twenty-five years in New York City theater includes distinguished acting, directing, and collaborative work. She has also won awards, including a 1990 Bessie Award for Creative Achievement and a 1992 Obie Award for writing, both for Sally's Rape.

McCauley has much previous experience working in a community to create performance art out of local events, including a three-part project based on specific events in the civil rights movement. "Usually I've done history of [events in] recent, living memory, drawing on people in the area who lived the experience. Even though Shays' rebellion is not recent, there's a spark for people here when you bring it up. It was a much more charged and extensive event than tends to be imagined or taught--poor farmers marched to Springfield to take the armory!"

To create the upcoming performance piece, McCauley led the cast in a process of dialogue and organized improvisation. "We interviewed campus employees and their families and Springfield residents to get what I call testimony from witnesses," McCauley says. From that testimony and other sources, she fashioned material to begin creating characters whose words compel us to hear and see what was in effect America's first civil war. "People carry around passion--words and images--about events that have taken place in history," McCauley says. "We undertake a process to transmit that event to the audience through theater, which helps convey these feelings and ideas, and look at what [the event] means for today."