Vampire or not, Mercy Brown has indeed achieved a kind of immortality. This bleak but compelling 19th century episode involving the Brown family of Exeter, Rhode Island continues to inflame the imagination and inspire pilgrimages to the poor girl’s grave. This Friday, the Awesome Collective will perform their interpretation of the events surrounding the death and life of this young woman in Mercy Brown and the Devil’s Footprint.
. . . an interactive, multimedia performance in which actors and audience travel through the intertwined worlds of two popular New England folktales: Mercy Brown’s notorious death in a time of vampires and tuberculosis, and the Devil’s chase of a murderous Native American woman from Boston to southern Rhode Island. Both vivid and chilling, Mercy Brown and the Devil’s Footprint interprets unanswered questions of myth, history and place with a fast-paced journey through theatre, live music, dance, animation and puppetry.
The show runs twice starting at 8pm. There will also be a partial WaterFire lighting Friday evening at 6:54pm sponsored by the American Urogynecologic Society.
(Poster by Erin Murphy)
Free, first show 8pm, second starts about 8:30pm, Friday, September 16, South Main Street Park (between Hemenway’s and the WWI Memorial)