Home on the Mornin' Train

The Underground Railroad performance is on Thursday, February 26, 2015 at the USC Lancaster Bundy Auditorium located at 476 Hubbard Drive, Lancaster, SC 29720. This fascinating play, performed by the drama students of Lancaster High School, begins at 7:00pm.

All tickets are only $5.25 and can be purchased online at http://www.lancastercitysc.com/performingarts or by calling the box office at 803-289-1486. Tickets will also be available at the door. Contact Jimola Wade at (803)-289-1494 or jwade@lancastercitysc.com for more info.

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In 1839 in Talladega, Alabama, slavery is alive and doing quite well in the United States. In 1939 in Hamburg, Germany, Hitler has called for the extermination of Jews. Jewish children Rifka and Aaron are sent by their parents into hiding with the Westemeier family in rural Germany. Soon they are joined by other Jewish children, Baruch, David and Ledah. The plan is to take them by boat to safety in Denmark.

While in hiding, the Jewish children read from a first person account of a runaway teenage slave named Brave Mary. They learn of the history of slavery in the United States and Brave Mary’s story of escaping an Alabama plantation in the 1830s. Brave Mary is joined in her escape by Katie-Mae and a young boy named Kindred. The means of survival for both groups of children is the Underground Railroad. The Westemeier’s son, Karl, helps his father smuggle the Jewish children out of Germany.

In America, Adelaide, the daughter of an abolitionist banker, gives asylum to runaway slaves on their flight to freedom. Olivia, a slave, puts herself in jeopardy as she uses her owner’s boat to ferry blacks across the Ohio River. Trials and tribulations beset both groups of children. However, the Jewish children are inspired by the strength and courage of the black children trying to find their way to Canada, as they make their own way to Denmark, and on to Sweden.

Home on the Mornin’ Train is written by Kim Hines and directed by Troy Dunbar and Catherine Wallace.