No Strangers Here Today


Susan Banyas No Strangers Here Todayis a movement monologue with live music that dances between personal memory and American history from the Civil War to the present. Susan Banyas' Quaker Great-Great Grandmother, Elizabeth Edwards, kept a diary during the Civil War with coded phrases suggesting her participation in the great socio-political movement called the Underground Railroad.

This vast and allusive bi-racial social network defied the federal government, and, through great personal risk, demanded an end to the slaveocracy, the slave system supported by both the South and the North. The memory network that arose from that time continues to symbolize freedom seeking and vigilance against economic, political, and personal tyranny by the master class. No Strangers Here Today is written in solidarity with the Ancestors who lived through those times and inspired this vision.

The collaboration between writer and movement artist Susan Banyas and jazz artist David Ornette Cherry is directed by choreographer Gregg Bielemeier and theatre artist Gwynne Warner. Development of this work was funded in part by a grant from the Regional Arts and Culture Council (RACC) and a commission from The Library Foundation of Los Angeles.


No Strangers Here Today is pleased to have been performed at the following venues:

  • Georgetown University, Washington, DC
  • RAP Center for drug rehabilitation, Washington, DC
  • St. Josephs University, Philadelphia, PA
  • Southern State Community College, Hillsboro, OH
  • La Mama ETC, NYC
  • Interstate Firehouse Theater, Portland, OR
  • ALOUD at Central Library, Los Angeles
  • Quaker & Genealogy Conference, Wilmington College Quaker Heritage Center & Waynesville Library, Waynesville, OH
  • Capital University, Columbus, OH
  • Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles, CA
  • Brooklyn Society of Friends (Quakers), Brooklyn, NY
  • International Society for the Study of Time, Cambridge, England & Monterrey, CA
  • Borderlands Conference/University of Northern Kentucky/National Underground Railroad Freedom Center, Cincinnati, OH