Sept. 28–Oct. 22: The politics of race, religion and sex have been omnipresent in our culture this past year, and its reflection can be found in many plays opening on Bay Area stages this fall. The Marin Theatre Company is offering a world premiere of Thomas Bradshaw’s play Thomas and Sally, about Thomas Jefferson and his slave Sally Hemings, who bore him six children. Bradshaw’s plays are always in-your-face: explicit about sex, and politics, and very funny and nasty. He’s also African-American, so he’s among the playwrights I’m most keen to see deconstruct this founding father, whose slaveholding ways and personal life mocked many of the values he so eloquently expressed in the Declaration of Independence. Bradshaw promises as well to take us into the beds of Ben Franklin, John and Abigail Adams, and the Marquis de Lafayette. I can’t wait. Details here.
