Looking Back to Look Ahead
By Ben Gunter
Theater with a Mission (TWAM) spent 2024 exploring the year 1824. Last year marked Tallahassee’s Bicentennial, and TWAM rose to the occasion with a festival called the Bicentennial Birthday Bash, which featured people, songs, dances, and foods from 200 years ago. This story looks back to give you highlights from the Bash, then looks ahead to give you a heads-up about a new play called Tales from Florida’s Log Cabin Capitol – a play that is now available to visit your hometown.
TWAM’s Bicentennial Birthday Bash reenacted turning points from Tallahassee’s past, so people could experience Florida’s multicultural history firsthand. Just like the commissioners who selected Tallahassee as the site for Florida’s new capital in 1823, people at the Bash got to witness a Native American stickball game. In fact, folks from the audience succeeded in stepping in and joining the game – and just like 200 years ago, the women won.
In addition to first-person experiences with Native culture, the Bash included encounters with Black cultural history. Essential Theatrical Associates (ETA) told animal stories from Africa – folktales about how life among frogs, spiders, crabs, and turtles illuminates human experience. Side by side with a petting zoo, pony rides, and a wild-animal exhibit from the Tallahassee Museum, ETA’s griots got people participating as they responded to stories that teach lessons about how we can take better care of the earth and each other.
Dancing was the art that dominated the Bash – and the art that made Tallahassee stand out during Territorial times.
Folks at the Bash got to revive a contradance from the 1820s called the Spanish Dance. Susan de Guardiola, a dance historian who gets hired to lead historical balls all over Europe and the USA, made her very first appearance in Florida during TWAM’s Bicentennial Birthday Bash, teaching the Spanish Dance.
Time-travelers at the Bash got to march in Las Posadas, a Christmas procession that came to Florida with settlers from Spain in the 1600s, sample gumbo cooked to a recipe from the 1800s, and eat their way through an Edible Timeline of treats that connected foods from 1824 to people in 2024. Audiences at the Bash also got to meet José Mariona Hernández, the first person of Hispanic descent ever elected to the US House of Representatives.
Hernández served as Florida Territory’s first delegate to Congress in 1823, then went on to fill the role of President of the Legislative Council in 1824, during the first legislature ever to convene in Tallahassee. At the Bash, Argentinian actor Matias Diuorno portrayed this pivotal politician from Florida’s past, playing the central character in TWAM’s new play Tales from Florida’s Log Cabin Capitol.
Looking back, TWAM’s Bicentennial Birthday Bash was a fitting finale to a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to step into history and connect with our roots. Looking ahead, the Bash is opening doors to explore where Florida is heading in the future.
Award-winning filmmaker Jennifer Petuch is currently editing footage captured during the Bash. Ms. Petuch plans to produce a series of interactive, instructional videos that will teach future generations how to play Native American stickball, tell African stories, dance Spanish dances, cook historic foods, and pass fairer laws.
Even better, TWAM’s new play Tales from Florida’s Log Cabin Capitol is now available to tour, inviting Floridians of all ages to learn how laws shape our lives and how informed citizens can get involved in making laws better. Visit TheaterwithaMission.com to book a tour today!
