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Tuesday, 22 July 2025
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Written by Amber Little
The Gilbert Theater is a downtown staple that has brought the community together to laugh, cry, and think, performing everything from Broadway hits to talent not yet to reach its fullest potential. Every season is an experience curated by the theater's artistic director.
The 2025-2026 season is packed with familiar favorites and lesser-known gems. Matt Lamb, the newly appointed AD of the Gilbert, has meticulously chosen a lineup of shows that will bring the best and brightest onto the stage and the community and beyond to the seats.
“When choosing this Mainstage Season, I wanted to bring a wide variety of shows that will bring out the best the Gilbert Theater can offer. Each show brings its own challenges and topics of discussion. I want to bring our community together to experience these stories in this beautiful, intimate space,” Lamb said.
Cabaret (Sept. 12-28)
Watch the lives of locals and expats of Berlin unfold on stage as the Third Reich slowly takes hold of the country and city. Offering an escape from the ever-growing spread of fascist ideology, the Cabaret promises they’ll forget their troubles.
A Christmas Story (Nov. 21- Dec. 7)
Hitting the stage for another round during the holiday season, this fan favorite and always entertaining and nostalgic stage play is based on the 1983 film that still hits the airwaves every Christmas. Follow Ralphie, a 9-year-old growing up in the 1940s, as he attempts to acquire the coveted Red Ryder BB gun for Christmas.
The Revolutionists (Jan. 30- Feb. 15)
Jump back in time and across the sea for a fantastical comedic tale that hits close to home. It’s a true story. Or total fiction. Or a play about a play. Or a raucous resurrection…that ends in a song and a scaffold.
Join four diverse and extraordinarily powerful women: playwright Olympe de Gouges, assassin Charlotte Corday, former queen Marie Antoinette, and Haitian rebel Marianne Angelle as they hang out, murder Marat, and try to beat back the extremist insanity in 1793 Paris.
On Golden Pond (March 20- April 5)
A feel-good multigenerational tale of a retired couple, who have found their rhythm in their differences, are thrust into the roles of new “grandparents” to an already-teenager. Laugh, cry, and learn a little teenage slang in this stageplay about love and embracing the time that we have together.
Rent (May 15-31)
For twenty-eight years, this beloved musical has been produced all over the country, and this year it’s coming to the Gilbert. A timeless tale about falling in love, finding your voice, and living for today, Rent is a year-long glimpse into the lives of the impoverished residents of an East Village building.
The young artists and musicians are navigating life and fighting for survival in the Lower East Side under the shadow of HIV/AIDS. Explore the complex emotions and actions that make us the humans we are, the ones we strive to be, even in the face of adversity.
The Gilbert Theater provides an intimate experience for patrons. Every performance is the culmination of hard work and passion for creating the best show for audiences, from the directors and actors to the lighting and sound staff.
Tickets for individual shows can be purchased at https://www.gilberttheater.com/our-2025-2026-season/. Season tickets can be purchased at https://www.gilberttheater.com/season-tickets/ and start at $120.
(Actors perform on the Gilbert Stage. Photo courtesy of Gilbert Theater's Facebook Page)
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Tuesday, 22 July 2025
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Written by D.G. Martin
“In the middle of a dark September night in 1711 in Carolina, John Lawson found himself captive, tied up and flung in the center of the council ring of the Tuscarora Indian town of Catechna,” writes Scott Huler on the opening page of his book, A Delicious Country: Rediscovering the Carolinas along the Route of John Lawson’s 1700 Expedition, published by UNC Press.
Lawson did not survive. Tradition says he was tortured to death, with wooden splinters pushed into his skin and set afire. On earlier visits to Tuscarora villages, Lawson had witnessed and described this type of torture.
Who was this Lawson, and why did the Tuscarora put him to death?
In 1700, English-born John Lawson was a newcomer to North America. Almost immediately upon arriving, he set out on foot from Charleston to explore the endless forests of backcountry Carolinas. The notes he took became the basis of a book, A New Voyage to Carolina, first published in 1709 and still a classic for its rich descriptions of flora and fauna and the conditions of the native peoples.
Like most other readers of Lawson, Huler is impressed with his descriptions and attitudes about the native populations. Lawson visited the Sewee, Santee, Sugeree, Wateree, Catawba, Waxhaw, Occaneechi, and Tuscarora. Huler writes, “He stayed in their wigwams, ate their food, trusted their guides. And he emerged with their stories, for some of which he is the only source in the world.”
Lawson, Huler continues, “documented native communities, buildings, agriculture, hunting, dance, trade, and culture through eyes clear, thorough, and respectful. Lawson depicts the natives as fully human—not some subspecies perceived only in comparison to European settlers.”
Lawson’s words were, “They are really better to us than we are to them.”
But Lawson found the native populations to be in a precarious situation.
“The Small-Pox and Rum have made such a Destruction amongst them, that, on good grounds, I do believe, there is not the sixth Savage living within two hundred Miles of all our Settlements, as there were fifty Years ago.”
For Lawson, his explorations and the reports about them opened the door to prominence and high positions in the young colony. That success came to a sudden end in 1711 when he was captured and executed by the Tuscarora whom he had so greatly admired and praised.
Why did they kill him?
UNC-Wilmington professor David La Vere’s The Tuscarora War: Indians, Settlers, and the Fight for the Carolina Colonies sets out in detail the background. The Tuscarora War began in 1711 with Lawson’s execution and a series of attacks by the Tuscarora on the thinly populated and mostly recently arrived settlers in the New Bern area.
Earlier, in the late 1600s and early 1700s, North Carolina was only sparsely settled, mainly by Virginians moving south into the lands around the Albemarle Sound. They encountered small groups of Native Americans and were generally able to subdue them.
However, to the south and west, the mighty Tuscarora strongholds stood as a barrier.
Meanwhile, Lawson’s glowing descriptions about his travels in the colony sparked the interest of the Lords Proprietors, who were looking for ways to encourage settlement. Lawson met a minor Swiss noble, Christopher de Graffenried, who worked out a plan with the Lords Proprietors to transport groups of German refugees and Swiss paupers to lands along the Neuse River near today’s New Bern.
These lands overlapped with the territories of the Tuscarora, who became increasingly threatened by the growing European presence.
La Vere writes that after overcoming odds, “De Graffenried’s colony of Swiss and German Palatines at the mouth of the Neuse River was thriving.” Therefore, he continues, “expansion up the Neuse seemed a real possibility.”
Lawson and Graffenried made a trip up the Neuse through Tuscarora lands to scout sites for future settlements.
“All the while, the Indians grew more worried and angrier as the abuses against them escalated and their complaints fell on deaf ears. The spark for the war came in mid-September 1711,” according to La Vere, with this trip up the Neuse.
The local Tuscarora king or chief, offended and threatened that his territory had been invaded, captured Lawson and Graffenried, and put them on trial for their lives. When one of the more radical leaders berated him, Lawson lost his temper.
“He argued back, his anger and sarcasm apparent to all.”
Lawson, of course, was doomed and was shortly executed. Graffenried remained in custody while the Tuscarora planned and carried out their first attacks on Sept. 22, 1711, appearing at first as friendly visitors to the settlers’ farms and then striking suddenly from ambush when the defenses were down.
North Carolina’s efforts to beat back the Tuscarora were unsuccessful. The colony did not have enough manpower, firepower, or money. Help finally came from the wealthy sister colony to the south.
South Carolina sent two expeditions (including hundreds of Native Americans in their forces) to relieve its northern neighbor. South Carolina’s involvement wiped out the Tuscarora at their stronghold at Neoheroka, near present-day Snow Hill in Greene County, opening the door to settlement in the interior of North Carolina.
What explains why South Carolina so enthusiastically aided its neighbor and how the South Carolina Native Americans were persuaded to provide the critical manpower?
“Above all,” La Vere wrote, “it was a chance to enrich oneself by looting the Tuscarora towns and taking slaves, which they could sell to waiting South Carolina traders for guns and merchandise.”
This sad footnote to North Carolina’s early history shows that the colonists secured their victory in the Tuscarora War only by facilitating and participating in the enslavement and sale of captured Tuscarora.
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