A New York Lamentation – Video

This video features a theatrical workshop production of A New York Lamentation, presented during the 2018 Diocesan Convention and produced by the Diocesan Reparations Committee. Written by the Rev. Chuck Kramer, rector of St. James’ Episcopal Church in Hyde Park, and directed by Jeannine Otis—an accomplished director, musician, and playwright who serves as the musical director for St. Mark’s in the Bowery—the play chronicles over 200 years of institutional slavery across New York and the Hudson Valley.

The video has a total runtime of approximately one hour, with the play’s narrative beginning five minutes into the recording. The featured image of Richard Jenkins (ca. 1783–1857)—an enslaved man owned by Samuel Bard who became the first sexton at St. James’—underscores the profound, lived history explored in this production. Though church financial records list Jenkins’s salary starting in 1822, his 1857 death notice honored him as a “forty years sexton,” indicating his service began while still enslaved in 1817.

(February 2019)