Healing The Wounds of History

In Traces of the Trade: A Story from the Deep North, first-time European American filmmaker Katrina Browne makes a troubling discovery – her New England ancestors were the largest slave-trading family in U.S. history.  She and nine fellow descendants set out to retrace the Triangle Trade:  from their ancestors' hometown in Rhode Island to slave forts in Ghana, and to sugar plantation ruins in Cuba.  Step by step, they uncover the vast extent of Northern complicity in slavery while also  stumbling through the minefield of contemporary race relations.  Traces of the Trade offers powerful new perspectives on the black/white divide.

As an epilogue to the film Traces of the Trade, psychotherapist and drama therapist Armand Volkas, Director of Healing the Wounds of History and Artistic Director of the Living Arts Playback Theatre Ensemble, and Holly Fulton, one of the DeWolf descendants in the film, will invite audience volunteers to share personal stories evoked by the screening.  The Living Arts Playback Theatre Ensemble will turn these stories into improvised theatre pieces and guide the community in an exploration of the impact of the legacy of slavery on our personal and collective psyches.