At APT, 'Nat Turner' and the aftermath of 'holy vengeance'

Lindsay Christians, The Cap Times

Sunlight filters through a western window and beams onto Nat Turner, his hands and feet chained, on the floor of his cell.

Turner, a formerly enslaved preacher who believes his crimes were dictated by a heavenly master, considers the sunset, his last. He will be executed with prejudice the following morning.

“What do you call a preacher whose congregation is his chains and shackles?” he says, addressing first the chain he holds, then God. “You’ve placed a window within these prison walls, and even here, you’ve shown me heaven.

“But how can I go there with peace tomorrow if my work on Earth has come to nothing?”

Gavin Lawrence gives a powerful performance as the title character in “Nat Turner in Jerusalem,” a 2016 drama by Nathan Alan Davis produced by American Players Theatre through Nov. 10. Tyrone Phillips, founding artistic director of Chicago’s Definition Theatre, directs the two-man production in the Touchstone Theatre at APT.

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