Revolutionary City Starts Fall Program Series in Colonial Williamsburg

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The Revolutionary City, embracing all of Virginia’s restored 18th-century capital city, offers Colonial Williamsburg guests new interactive and immersive experiences throughout the day that are inviting, compelling and provocative. New program schedules — fashioned for autumn — begin Labor Day, Sept. 3 and run through Nov. 21.

 

Throughout the course of each day, Revolution in the Streets programming provides guests opportunities to meet and get to know townspeople, to learn about the challenges that they must confront, the choices that they must make in the face of war and a transition from monarchy to republic and a new nation. In The Revolutionary City’s historic sites, Revolutionary Stories illuminate in depth the issues and characters that make up The Revolutionary City and bring together historic trades, on-the-street presentations, African American and Native American programs, military programs and other activities.

 

Many of the flagship daily outdoor theatrical presentations move to afternoons for the fall season. “Revolutionary City: Building a New Nation” is presented Mondays and includes a visit to Williamsburg by Martha Washington, Gen. Lafayette, a founding father who shares his hopes for the future of the new American republic and a former slave — now pastor of an African American church — who discusses his vision for his congregation.

 

“Revolutionary City: The Old Order Collapses, 1775 – 1776” on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays recreates the chronology of a profound change for the people of Williamsburg. As the revolution turned from political debate to armed combat, colonial Americans faced difficult choices that re-shaped their concepts of rights and responsibilities, and the meaning of citizenship. The afternoon’s dramas begin with arrival of news of the battles at Concord and Lexington.

 

On Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays, “Revolutionary City: Building a New Nation, 1779 – 1781” chronicles critical moments in Williamsburg during the War for Independence.  Currency collapse and rampant inflation push townspeople to confront the crisis.

 

Revolutionary Stories that expand the guest’s Revolutionary City experience are presented earlier in the day. They include two programs not requiring an admission ticket: “Storming the Palace,” a response to the royal governor’s theft of the colony’s gunpowder from the Magazine — presented at 10:30 a.m. Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays on Palace Green — and “The War Comes Home,” presented at 10:30 a.m. on Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays at the Courthouse as the town’s residents learn that a British fleet has invaded the Chesapeake Bay, destroying a supply depot in Suffolk and with it more than two million pounds sterling worth of supplies.

 

Revolutionary City programs presented in historic sites and within the managed access area require a Colonial Williamsburg Revolutionary City admission ticket, Annual Pass or Good Neighbor Card. Outdoor presentations are weather dependent.

Williamsburg is located in Virginia’s Tidewater region, 20 minutes from Newport News, within an hour’s drive of Richmond and Norfolk, and 150 miles south of Washington, D.C. For more information about Colonial Williamsburg, call 1-800-HISTORY or visit Colonial Williamsburg’s website at www.history.org.

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