Little Row Boat or, Conjecture

Fringe Festival 2022

November 4 – 6, 2022

Studio ONE

Little Row Boat or, Conjecture, written by nationally renowned playwright and CFA associate professor of playwriting and theatre arts, Kirsten Greenidge, debuted as part of CFA’s annual Fringe Festival in Studio ONE in November 2022. Little Row Boat, or Conjecture is a piece that’s been years in the making. The piece, originally scheduled to be produced in 2020, examines the relationship between Sally Hemmings and her brother James Hemmings, while they were enslaved by Thomas Jefferson, the third president of the United States.

As the French Revolution brews outside, teenage slave Sally Hemings gets her first taste of freedom while serving in Thomas Jefferson’s Paris home. Inside, she becomes involved in one of the most speculated about and scandalous relationships in American history. With verve, humor, and music, playwright Kirsten Greenidge imagines how events unfolded in the Jefferson household for the family and “servants” alike. Little Row Boat is a visceral and intricate story of convictions, contradictions, and sacrifice in the pursuit of liberty. (Bret Adams)

Director • Thomas Jones

Stage Manager • Jasper Scott

Costume Designer • Logan Samuels

Scenic Designer • Madeline Riddick-Seals

Lighting Designer • Slick Jorgensen

Sound Designer • Sam Bliss

Photography by Rodrigo Larios

Program

Flip through the program to find info on the cast and crew of Little Row Boat or, Conjecture.

Behind Little Row Boat

Taking inspiration from American historian Annette Gordon-Reed’s accounting of the complex, real-life relationship between Sally Hemmings and Jefferson, the drama imagines and fleshes out the power dynamics that must have been at play while the pair were living in Paris, just before the French Revolution.

“I don’t know the tenor of their relationship, because I wasn’t there,” Greenidge says, “but Sally Hemmings’ descendants believe they had a form of relationship, and an agreement that governed not only how they would relate to each other, but also their future children’s status as free people or enslaved people.”

Greenidge was intrigued by this murky (and conspicuously under-documented) time, when Hemmings—who would have been a teenager then and also would have been a free person in France—and Jefferson—her enslaver in the United States—began an intimate relationship that resulted in at least four children who lived to adulthood.

“I was very interested in Sally Hemmings as a young person,” Greenidge says. “I think there’s this tendency to see ourselves as separate or very different from people throughout history, but there are certain qualities that are consistent through time.”