Free Man of Color at Hattiloo Theatre

When John Newton Templeton is unexpectedly freed after his master’s death, he migrates to the free state of Ohio where Robert Wilson, an avowed abolitionist and president of Ohio University, brings Templeton to his home. Seeing the opportunity to use Templeton to prove that African-Americans were capable of the same academic excellence as whites, Templeton works as the president’s personal “student servant” while attending classes. In this play about race, culture, and the differences between education and assimilation in America, Wilson is forced to reevaluate his abolitionist views and Templeton is forced to examine the reason he was chosen to be the “first.”