Two years ago the History Theatre presented four new works related to the history of our fair state of Minnesota, as they do every year under the title
Raw Stages. The class of 2014 has now all seen full productions, telling Minnesota stories as diverse as
a Filipino Debutante's Ball,
Minnesota's strangest and most infamous true crime story,
a Minnesota boy who grew up to do a little radio show, and a black voyageur in Minnesota's pre-statehood frontier days. These stories are all part of our history as Minnesotans and as Americans, and I appreciate the History Theatre's commitment to developing and producing these Minnesota stories. The last play from the
2014 Raw Stages festival to make it to the big stage is
George Bonga: Black Voyageur (previously titled
Boundary Waters). It's a fascinating story of friendship, survival, and identity in a world that existed less than 200 years ago, but seems so very far away. Born of an African American father and an Ojibwe mother,
George Bonga became a well-known fur trader who straddled the worlds of the Native and White cultures, and was one of the first black men born in what would become Minnesota. The play covers one incident in this man's eventful and historic life, and the implications of that event in his life and the larger community.
