Philly Fringe 2024: Christ Church Preservation Trust presents On Buried Ground

The performance begins at Christ Church Burial Ground at 5th and Arch Streets. A cast of eight dancer-actors in period costume is scattered throughout the grounds, with sound piped in at various locations.

Two acres, 3900 graves

It opens with a male voice narrating a basic history of Christ Church and its burial ground: founded in 1695, two acres, 3900 burials, including many founding fathers. A woman in the cast repeats the narrative, then adds more details that pertain to the Black history of the institution: the notorious mass slave auction of one of its members, Pierce Mease Butler; and the Christ Church burial services for four Black children, at least three of whom lie here in unmarked graves. This sets the tone for reconsidering the historical narrative that’s more commonly known.

As the audience is encouraged to “find them” by wandering the graveyard, they encounter actors in various spots who evoke the four—Sharpers, Violet, William, and Charles—in scenes that might have been part of their lives, with childhood games like hopscotch, a mother braiding a child’s hair, a girl being hugged by her father. Their movements and the audio soundscape, in the dusk of the graveyard amid scattered tiny lights and lanterns, are often dreamlike, but then are punctuated by stark verbal references to their unmarked graves, and their lives being separated from their parents.

The audience is then led to Christ Church’s Neighborhood House, a few blocks away, where a companion exhibit is on display. Curated by Malkia Okech, Groundings: History, Memory, and Hope in 18^th and 19^th Century Philadelphia (on view for free through the end of the year) is a mixture of old artifacts, new and reproduced artwork, and audio tracks that both represent and imagine the experience of the church’s 18th-century Black congregants.

Dancing with Alice of Dunk Ferry

The final portion of the performance moves to the church sanctuary, with dancers and narrators evoking the story of Alice of Dunk’s Ferry (1686 – 1802), an enslaved woman who was a Christ Church congregant and an early oral historian of Philadelphia.

On Buried Ground is sobering and thought-provoking. The audience is led to consider the cruelty of slavery, while also learning about lives that have been largely omitted from the historical record. It’s an immersive experience that could be unnerving to some, as dancers and actors move among the audience, addressing them, sometimes sharing a pew for a few moments, but it’s effective in bringing to life a human population who, in their own time, were considered merely property. Overall, it’s a work of great beauty and compassion, even as it relates an ugly side of America’s, and especially Philadelphia’s, colonial narrative.

At top: Song Aziza Tucker and one of the young dancers from Gwendolyn Bye Dance Center performing ‘On Buried Ground’ at Christ Church Burial Ground. (Photo by Rayne.)