The Injustice of The Past

The House of the Negro Insane by Terence Anthony is a searing piece of theatre that exposes a dark chapter in American history. Praised by critics as a gripping, emotionally explosive study of Jim Crow-era racial injustice, Daniel Carlton directs a production starring Benjamin Rowe, Rob Penty, Wadiah Waliah and Sidney Hatcher, bringing devastatingly vivid historical wrongs to the stage in stark detail. Don't miss this haunting and eye-opening production, playing at 59E59 now.

What Is The Story?

In 1935, Attius is a long-term inmate locked within the bleak, inescapable walls of Central State Hospital, a segregated asylum used to house black Americans. Billed as a psychiatric hospital, in reality it acts as a prison for the impoverished, those with diseases, and dangerously insane criminals. Attius has resigned himself to a life of quiet isolation, building coffins. But two new arrivals cause him to reckon with a hope he’d forgotten… the possibility of freedom.