WELLSBORO, PA – On Tuesday, March 24 at 7:30 p.m., Daisy Century will portray Harriet Tubman on stage in the Coolidge Theatre at the Deane Center for the Performing Arts at 104 Main Street in Wellsboro.
This is the first of six important historial figures being portrayed during the 2026 History Comes Alive Series as America celebrates Its 250th birthday.
In period costume, Century will tell Tubman’s story. She will stay in character speaking as Tubman not only for the show but also during the audience question and answer session that follows.
Century considers Tubman to be her role model by putting others first and leading by example. Like Tubman, she grew up on a farm, has a wonderful singing voice and is a determined woman of conviction, once starting a project seeing it through to completion.
A published author, writing under the name Emily Nelson, and an accomplished singer, Century is a talented teacher and actor who continues to inspire people through her thoroughly-researched, dramatically intense portrayals of Tubman and others she has been doing for the American Historical Theatre based in Philadelphia for the past 27 years.
Harriet Tubman lived as a slave on a plantation in Dorchester County, Maryland. Born Araminta Ross to enslaved parents, her exact birth date is not known but is believed to be in March 1822. Frequently threatened, beaten, whipped, and starved, Tubman’s indomitable spirit could not be broken.
As an adolescent, she suffered a severe head injury when an overseer threw a two-pound metal weight at a male slave and struck her instead. For the rest of her life, she suffered from seizures. Even this daunting physical obstacle could not keep her from her freeing herself and freeing others from slavery.
Around 1844, she married John Tubman, a free black man and became known as Harriet Tubman. In 1849, she escaped to Philadelphia and freedom. Between 1851 and 1862, she returned to Maryland at least 13 times using the Underground Railroad to rescue about 70 slaves, including family members and others. “I never ran my train off the track and I never lost a passenger,” she said.
During the Civil War, Tubman worked for the Union Army, first as a cook and nurse, and then as an armed scout and spy. After the war, she directed her considerable energies towards humanitarian causes, including women’s voting rights.
Sponsors of the History Comes Alive series are America250PA and the Charles Knox and Margaret Etner Foundation.
The other five History Comes Alive shows will be at 7:30 p.m. in the Coolidge Theatre on the following dates: Tuesday, April 14, Kim Hanley as Abigail Adams; Friday, May 15, Barry Stevens as Benjamin Franklin; Tuesday, June 23, Bob Gleason as Charles Wilson Peale; Friday, July 10, Tom Pitz as Thomas Jefferson; and Tuesday, Oct. 13, Neill Hartley as
Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Tickets are $15 for adults and free for youth under 21 years of age. For more information or tickets, visit deanecenter.com or call 570-724-6220.
