A vivid dream inspired Louise Kelley’s latest play, “Harriet and Ruth,” about Maryland-born abolitionist Harriet Tubman and a fictional friend, Ruth Schreiben, a Jewish widow.
The play, in excerpts, will be staged Aug. 14-16 as part of community theater Silver Spring Stage’s 2026 One-Act Festival. The program features excerpts from five new works by regionally-based playwrights. For “Harriet and Ruth,” Kelley, a retired educator, condensed scenes from various parts of her play to introduce the story of this special relationship.
“In 2023, after I had taught Harriet Tubman for years as a teacher at D.C. public schools, Montgomery County Public Schools, charter and other schools, I had a dream one night,” the Silver Spring resident recalled. “In the dream, I was observing Harriet Tubman coming up to a roughly built but substantial house in the woods. Ruth is calling, ‘Who’s there? I’ve got a dog.’ Harriet says, ‘Don’t let the dog loose. We’ll move on.’ Then Ruth says, ‘Wait. I’m the one you’re looking for.’”
That dream became the seed for Kelley’s latest play, detailing a fictional — but not impossible — friendship between the historic matriarch and an imagined Jewish woman, Ruth.
Kelley recalled, “I woke up and went right to my computer and started writing as much as I could remember.” Since, the playwright, who penned her first plays as a student at Montgomery College in the 1970s, has researched Tubman’s life and writings, while also delving into Jewish life during the abolitionist period.
“One of the great things I got to do was go to the Library of Congress and hold a copy of Sarah Bradford’s book called ‘Scenes from the Life of Harriet Tubman.’ I had to wear gloves and, oh boy, the writing was very old-fashioned and ornate,” Kelley said. “But the story itself and the quotes from Harriet Tubman were magnificent, because, of course, she was well known as an orator.” Bradford wrote the book to raise money for her friend Tubman.
Figuring out how to make the Jewish woman, Ruth, feel authentic also took research. “While she’s fictional,” Kelley said, “I had to see if it was plausible” that Tubman, who earned the moniker Moses, could have encountered and forged a friendship with a Jewish woman abolitionist. If not, the play would have remained an unproduced writing exercise.
Her research into Jewish life during the abolition period included numerous threads, among them the beginnings of Reform Judaism and the evolution of Baltimore Hebrew Congregation to Reform, both of which occurred during this era, as immigrant Jews sought greater access to the public sphere and encountered modernity.
Specifically, the playwright cited, “Her Works Praise Her: A History of Jewish Women in America from Colonial Times to the Present” by historian Hasia Diner and author Beryl Lieff Benderly and “Jewish Women: A History from Colonial Times to Today” by historian Pamela Nadell, American University’s director of Jewish Studies. Both books featured Ernestine Rose, a contemporary of Tubman. Born in Poland, Rose moved to the U.S. in 1836. She became known as an abolitionist and suffragist as she spoke around the country about abolishing slavery, religious tolerance, public education and women’s equality.
The play reveals how two women with stark differences due to political and societal strictures of the era forge a relationship that allows them both to grow. Kelley gives each woman agency, saying, “I didn’t want Ruth to be the white savior that Black writers talk about white writers” who tend to follow this trope. In fact, the two women save each other, Kelley said, even if they could not be peers. “It’s Harriet that really saves Ruth, who wants to do this work,” the writer explained. “Harriet says, ‘If you want to do this, you need to pay attention to these strategies I’m going to teach you.’”
At a moment when Black-Jewish relations have frayed, the example of this fictional friendship between a Black woman and a Jewish woman can serve as an example for viewers today. “What’s been going on lately is Black-Jewish friendships are sometimes broken,” Kelley said. “It just breaks my heart.”
Yet, thinking back to that inspiring dream, Kelley said, “I feel that Harriet picked me because she wanted her story told again in another way. I don’t think we can have too many stories about Harriet Tubman.”
Lisa Traiger is an award-winning arts journalist who covers the performing and visual arts in the Washington, D.C., region and beyond.