{"id":1620,"date":"2019-05-16T09:05:55","date_gmt":"2019-05-16T13:05:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/?p=1620"},"modified":"2019-05-23T15:31:43","modified_gmt":"2019-05-23T19:31:43","slug":"kyle-bass-telling-truths-through-fiction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/2019\/05\/16\/kyle-bass-telling-truths-through-fiction\/","title":{"rendered":"Telling Truths Through Fiction"},"content":{"rendered":"

A 1766 baptism \u2014 of Tim, listed as a \u201cNegro child servant\u201d to William Bennett of Connecticut \u2014 marks the first public record of Kyle Bass<\/a>\u2019s family in the United States.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe story of Tim\u2019s maturation under northern slavery, his desire for and gain of freedom, and his settlement and life in Delhi, N.Y., haunts and inspires me as a writer,\u201d says Bass, who has taught Colgate\u2019s Playwriting course in the Department of Theater<\/a> since 2011.<\/p>\n

Through researching and writing a work that tells Tim\u2019s story \u2014 his own family\u2019s history \u2014 Bass, a playwright, is bringing to light the little-explored subject of slavery\u2019s impact in upstate New York. The Frankfort, N.Y., native holds the Gretchen Hoadley Burke \u201981 Endowed Chair in Regional Studies<\/a>, which supports outstanding scholarship on the upstate region, for 2018\u201319. Colgate\u2019s Upstate Institute<\/a> facilitates the selection of the Burke Chair annually and supports Burke Chair related events.<\/p>\n

Bass, who says his family \u201chas been owning land and voting since the late 1700s,\u201d notes that his project builds upon research conducted by his cousin, Colgate Trustee Emerita Diane Ciccone \u201974, P\u201910. His work as a dramatist is \u201cabout wrestling with facts and history, to find an effective story to tell a wider truth. Facts are what happened. The truth is what we understand<\/i> about what happened. That\u2019s why everybody\u2019s truth is different about the same facts. Ask your sibling about your childhood. Your brother will tell you a very different story.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bass\u2019s most recent play, Possessing Harriet<\/i>, is also based on real-life upstate events and tells a wider truth about race, identity, equality, and the meaning \u2014 and price \u2014 of freedom. In Peterboro, N.Y. (just 15 miles from Colgate), in 1839, Harriet Powell, a young, mixed-race enslaved woman on the run, awaits cover of darkness with her rescuers. Through impassioned, poetic dialogue with Thomas Leonard, a free black man working the Underground Railroad; wealthy abolitionist Gerrit Smith, whose attic provides temporary shelter; and Smith\u2019s young cousin, the vocal women\u2019s equality advocate Elizabeth Cady (later Stanton), Powell grapples with the ramifications of her escape and deciding to continue her journey to Canada.<\/p>\n

More than 200 Colgate students \u2014 from theater, film and media studies, history, education, geography, and Core 151 classes \u2014 saw Possessing Harriet<\/i> in October when it premiered at Syracuse Stage, where Bass is the associate artistic director. The play\u2019s premiere provided perfect timing for Bass\u2019s appointment to Colgate\u2019s Burke Chair, which, in addition to research support, includes giving a public lecture and teaching two courses.<\/p>\n

His campus public lecture took place before students traveled to see Possessing Harriet<\/i>. Two of the actors, Nicole King (Harriet Powell) and Lucy Lavely (Elizabeth Cady), performed a scene and Bass discussed his five-year writing process. Of the play\u2019s depiction of young people \u2014 close in age to the students \u2014 \u201cliving in enormous circumstances\u201d nearly 200 years ago, says Bass, \u201cIt seemed to resonate. It meant something to them in 2018. That was lovely to see, because there\u2019s no reason to write about the past if you can\u2019t do that to talk about the present.\u201d<\/p>\n

After letting the play and his lecture marinate since the fall, students in two spring courses are delving into their own creative explorations of truth. In his Research Seminar in Dramatic Writing, Bass has students asking, \u201cHow do we look at facts to fuel our fiction? More than this date, this time, this place, these people, how do you turn facts into truth?\u201d In Playwriting, he says, \u201cI\u2019m asking students to take risks, in the ways in which we express ourselves, tell ourselves who we are, and let others know who we are. Go inside yourself, and make that interior discovery exterior. When it excites you in the writing, that comes alive for the audience.\u201d<\/p>\n