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Why was The Escape; or, A Leap for Freedom important in African American theatre history?

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Phillis Wheatley's first book of poetry — African American literature Frontispiece and title page of *Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral* (1773) by Phillis Wheatley, the first Black woman to become a poet of note in the United States. The portrait on which the frontispiece's engraving is based is often attributed to Scipio Moorhead, an Black artist and writer who, like Wheatley, was enslaved and living in Boston.

The Escape; or, A Leap for Freedom (1858), written by William Wells Brown, holds a significant place in African American theatre history because it was the first play by a Black American to be published.12

The work is a melodrama that incorporates comic elements and draws upon themes and scenes familiar to readers of fugitive slave narratives, specifically focusing on the story of two enslaved people who marry in secret. By authoring this play, Brown—who was also the first African American to publish a novel—pioneered the entry of Black writers into the realm of dramatic literature. While earlier plays by Black authors existed, such as James Brown’s King Shotaway (1823), The Escape remains distinguished as the first published work of its kind in the canon of Black theater.132