No Strangers Here Today

written by Susan Grace Banyas
music by David Ornette Cherry

“…a stirring portrait of abolitionist effort, and illuminating morally and historically.”

– Marty Hughley, The Oregonian

No Strangers Here Today were the words in the diary of my Quaker great-great Grandmother, Elizabeth Edwards, in 1864, during the Civil War. The coded language—fugitives from slavery were called Strangers—indicated that she and her family were part of the vast grassroots multi-racial network called the Underground Railroad. Set in Highland County, 100 years before The Hillsboro Story, this is a story of those times and of faith in action.

…small, personal moments with the epic story of abolition.  Bravissimo! —Liz Copeland, middle school teacher

Originally performed at the International Society for the Study of Time conference “Time and Memory,” Cambridge, England, the work was commissioned as a duet, with composer David Ornette Cherry, by the Los Angeles Public Library ALOUD series. The show toured to theatres, universities, off-off Broadway, conferences, in middle and high schools, drug rehab center, Quaker meeting houses around the country, 2007-12. 

photo by Jov Luke

The Abolition of War
introduction to No Strangers Here Today
free download
This essay was written during at a Robert Rauschenberg Residency, 2011

No Strangers Theme 1:30
David Cherry on keyboard

David Cherry commentary :50
video by Quincy Davis

Edwards farm in Highland County Ohio

Safe House video by
Quincy Davis, 2010, 3:25

White Brick Friends Meeting House, Waynesville OH, where Elizabeth Edwards was registered as a Hicksite Quaker and member of the Society of Friends. We performed here at a Quaker conference on women abolitionists.

The Ohio River crossing near Ripley, where Abolitionists co-operated to send fugitives north into Highland County, and Copperheads, southern sympathizers, co-operated to hunt down fugitives and kidnap free Blacks, to send to the masters in the south.

…an essential contribution to North American self-understanding….  Banyas has created something of rare importance here and Cherry’s soundscape contribution is worth the ticket price on its own.
—Zaph Mann, Nonstarvingartists.com 

People who saw the work told me that they could not stop thinking about it, that it changed how they thought about both past and present racism in this country.—Louise Steinman, Aloud in Los Angeles

It is your civilization, it is you. Good or evil, you belong to it, and this side of the grave, you will never get away form the marks that it has given you. —George Orwell