Quintessence Theater Group and Playhouse Creatures Theatre Company present Naomi Wallace and Marcus Rediker’s The Return of Benjamin Lay

The show opened just one day after Trump announced his proposed 2026 budget, which seeks to defund and disintegrate the NEA and NEH. Benjamin Lay will run amid the fallout of the administration’s additional decision, announced via email to grantees over the weekend, that money promised to arts and humanities organizations all over the country will not be coming. These pronouncements, as threatening and gutting as they are to champions of free speech and expression, only highlight the poignancy and timelessness of this play.

Looking at Lay

Told in a swift 75 minutes, The Return of Benjamin Lay traces the life of activist and abolitionist Benjamin Lay, who was made infamous in Quaker circles for his fiery politics and advocacy for enslaved peoples. Lay begins the play petitioning the audience, who are assigned as his Quaker brethren, to be admitted back into the fold after he had been cast out and ostracized by the community.

To plead his case, Lay walks us through his early days as a shepherd and subsequent 12 years as a sailor at sea, through his time as a shop keeper in Barbados where he is confronted by the barbaric treatment of enslaved workers on sugarcane plantations, and finally landing here in Pennsylvania where he lived out his final days. Informing his experiences is the reality of living as a little person in the 18th century—seen as another reason to ostracize or demean him. As with many marginalized people, his perceived difference emboldens him to challenge the ways he is viewed by others and how we treat the systemically oppressed. As he often reminds us throughout the play, there is a vast difference between looking at a person and really seeing them.

A captivating play and performance

Mark Povinelli powerfully embodies Lay. He is a striking figure in purposefully simple and distressed clothing (costumes by Isobel Nicolson), with a brightness that bursts forth from Patrick Blanchard’s spare but rich wooden platform set to the far corners of the cavernous Sedgwick Theater. Whether diving from a chair, climbing a ladder, or sweeping on his knees across the stage, Povinelli moves with grace and passion. His performance is captivating from the moment he strides onto the scene.

Bioplays of historical figures like this run the risk of being a dry classroom lecture. But the shared power between Povinelli’s execution, the light yet steady guidance of Director Ron Daniels, and the poetic and galvanizing writing by Wallace and Rediker, make an inspiring night of theater. (Rediker is the author of The Fearless Benjamin Lay: The Quaker Dwarf Who Become the First Revolutionary Abolitionist.)

Be like Benjamin Lay

I urge you to attend before performances wrap up May 18. I was reminded of how pleasurable it is to be in community with others, to hear gasps and see an audience compelled to applause in the middle of a performance, to receive the gift of a well-executed and riveting piece of art. Don’t miss your chance. We may not know how much longer we have the privilege.

If you feel compelled to use the voice you have, follow in the footsteps of Benjamin Lay. Call your representatives. Tell them why the arts matter to you. As Lay urged us in the audience in a moment that left us all struck and humming with an electric charge: “A tongue is for saying ‘no’ when a ‘no’ is required.”