by Orissa Arend
Harry and the Thief, recently staged at the Contemporary Arts Center, is science fiction, historical drama, and comedic farce. Mimi (Te’Era Coleman), a professional thief, is convinced by her cousin Jeremy to go back to 1863 in his brand-new time machine and wreak havoc on history by providing Harriet Tubman (Samantha Beaulieu) with a cache of modern high-powered weapons. The NOLA project, now in its 15th season, describes the play as possibly its boldest production to date.
Says Sigrid Gilmer, the play’s brilliant author: “In writing Harry and the Thief I wanted to create something funny and exciting that pulled from our collective stories around Harriet Tubman, slavery and heroism, then twist them in a way that was surprising, thought provoking, and hilarious while at the same time paying tribute to the courage and sheer bad-assery of Tubman and Americans who were held in captivity.” She describes her genre blending plays as, “black comedies that are historically bent, totally perverse, joyfully irreverent, and are concerned with issues of identity, pop culture, and contemporary American society.”
What Gilmer knew about Tubman was that she carried a gun with her and that when people traveling North with her would lose their nerve, she would tell them, “You’re gonna be free or you’re gonna be dead.” That triggered for Gilmer action sequences, songs, and hilarious physical contortions of actors. Even the villains, the slave owners, are funny – caricatures of incompetence and a perverse sense of who they are. Then there is baby “what’s its name,” the blue-eyed progeny of a mother who was raped.
Gilmer invites the audience to play, acknowledging that SHE is playing with the subject matter. Time is warped. The past and the present transform each other. “Let’s pretend,” she invites us, making the audience complicit.
Gilmer: “Why are all stories about people of color always tragic, tragic stories? There’s a set frame around suffering. The play butts up against that and says, ‘We can still tell this story and these people can be happy and have agency and joy.’” She doesn’t frame the horrible historical stuff in a way that makes people tragic. “Being born into a situation that is fucked up and tragic is different from being fucked up and tragic because of a situation,” says Gilmer. What a profound shift! It goes beyond not blaming the victim. The play redefines victim-hood itself. And the audience barely notices because of the laughter and fast-paced action. To add to the merriment, the run-away slaves are named after the Jolie-Pitt kids.
The play puts to rest the idea that the white male perspective is somehow universal. This is history imagined from quite another point of view. It flips the script that the past determines the present and the future. Gilmer will not let the past be white-washed and sublimated. The first step toward healing is memory, acknowledgment, and a reckoning of some sort. The next step, which Gilmer so adroitly takes, is to re-imagine past, present, and future with a fluidity that transforms all three.
Jeff Thomas
Publisher • Opinion Columnist • Licensed General Contractor • Real Estate Appraiser • New Orleans
Jeff Thomas is the publisher of Black Source Media and one of New Orleans’ most direct voices on civic affairs, economic justice, and Louisiana politics. He writes from the intersection of experience and accountability — as a licensed general contractor,a tech company founder and executive with over 30 years experience, and a businessman who has worked across the city’s civic, media, and construction ecosystems for decades.
His Sunday column covers Louisiana legislative politics, insurance discrimination, housing policy, and the forces shaping Black community life in New Orleans and across the state. Thomas writes in the tradition of Black journalists who hold power accountable without apology — building arguments from data, delivering verdicts from evidence, and speaking to Black New Orleans with the directness the moment demands.
He is also the principal of EA Inspection Services, LLC, a government inspection services company. Black Source Media is his platform for the civic conversation New Orleans has needed and too rarely had.
Selected Articles by Jeff Thomas
Black Neighborhoods Pay the Highest Insurance Rates in Louisiana. Here’s What They Don’t Want You to Know.
They Didn’t Yell the N-Word. They Went to Law School, Bided Their Time, and Rewrote the Constitution Instead.
Vappie vs. Morrell: Why Does Justice Look Different in New Orleans?
The State Has the Money. New Orleans East Just Needs Them to Use It.
The Failure of Mitch Landrieu
Publisher — Black Source Media
Jeff Thomas
Publisher • Opinion Columnist • Licensed General Contractor • Real Estate Appraiser • New Orleans
Jeff Thomas is the publisher of Black Source Media and one of New Orleans’ most direct voices on civic affairs, economic justice, and Louisiana politics. He writes from the intersection of experience and accountability — as a licensed general contractor,a tech company founder and executive with over 30 years experience, and a businessman who has worked across the city’s civic, media, and construction ecosystems for decades.
His Sunday column covers Louisiana legislative politics, insurance discrimination, housing policy, and the forces shaping Black community life in New Orleans and across the state. Thomas writes in the tradition of Black journalists who hold power accountable without apology — building arguments from data, delivering verdicts from evidence, and speaking to Black New Orleans with the directness the moment demands.
He is also the principal of EA Inspection Services, LLC, a government inspection services company. Black Source Media is his platform for the civic conversation New Orleans has needed and too rarely had.
Selected Articles by Jeff Thomas
Black Neighborhoods Pay the Highest Insurance Rates in Louisiana. Here’s What They Don’t Want You to Know.
They Didn’t Yell the N-Word. They Went to Law School, Bided Their Time, and Rewrote the Constitution Instead.
Vappie vs. Morrell: Why Does Justice Look Different in New Orleans?
The State Has the Money. New Orleans East Just Needs Them to Use It.
The Failure of Mitch Landrieu