Show Notes: ‘Sally & Tom’ Is the History Lesson We Actually Need

History is often presented as a collection of settled facts—names etched into monuments, portraits hanging in museums, stories polished until their roughest edges disappear. Sally & Tom, now making its regional premiere at Zach Theater, has no interest in preserving that comfort. Instead, it cracks open one of America's most enduring historical contradictions, inviting audiences into a gripping play-within-a-play that examines the tangled relationship between our five-cent founding father, Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings while asking equally urgent questions about who gets to tell history, whose voices are centered, and whether the past can ever truly stay in the past.

For audiences accustomed to Broadway's biggest historical blockbuster, Sally & Tom offers a thought provoking counterpoint. Where Hamilton gives us a dazzling hip-hop mythology of America's founders, Sally & Tom quietly rolls up its sleeves and asks us to sit with the complicated reality of Thomas Jefferson. It's less mixtape, more mirror — and all the more powerful because of it. Sally & Tom is Pulitzer Prize-winner Suzan-Lori Parks’s story about a scrappy theater company preparing to stage a historical drama as we watch the messy rehearsal process unravel to reveal contradictions, personal tensions, and questions with no easy answers.

At first glance, Sally & Tom appears to be about Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings. It isn't. Not really.

Suzan-Lori Parks uses their relationship as the gravitational center of a far more compelling question: What does it cost to tell a story that history has never fully reckoned with?

Angelique Archer as Luce/Sally in “Sally & Tom” for Zach Theater. Photos by Axel B Photography

The acting is fantastic across the board. Every member of the cast rises to the challenge of inhabiting characters who often exist in multiple emotional and historical realities simultaneously, and among an exceptional ensemble, Angelique Archer delivers a captivating performance as both Luce and Sally, balancing vulnerability and resilience with power and presence. As Luce, she is not merely an actor playing Sally Hemings. She is a contemporary Black actress navigating the expectations, politics, and emotional labor that come with portraying a woman whose life has so often been interpreted through someone else's lens. As Sally, she emerges as an intelligent, observant, emotionally complex young woman living within a system that severely limits her choices. Archer succeeds in becoming the bridge between history and the present, reminding us that the questions Parks asks aren't confined to the 18th century.

Hollis Edwards III as Kwame/James in “Sally & Tom” for Zach Theater.

That said, if Archer is the heart of Sally & Tom, then Hollis Edwards III is its conscience. As Kwame, he is an actor deeply invested in integrity, unwilling to accept comforting narratives simply because they're dramatically satisfying. As James, that fervor transforms into quiet endurance. I can’t help but believe that Edwards’s decision to take up this dualistic role is rooted in genuine care — for the story and for the people that history has marginalized. His delivery of James’s monologue, an item of contention within the play, almost elicited tears from this audience member. Together, they anchor a production filled with performances that feel deeply lived. If Archer provides the production's emotional gravity, Edwards supplies its ethical momentum.

The production is elevated further by the directorial partnership of Dave Steakley and Dr. Yunina Barbour-Payne. Their collaboration is evident in every carefully considered element, even down to the installation in the lobby. Steakley's theatrical instincts keep the production moving with confidence and clarity, while Dr. Barbour-Payne's extensive historical scholarship grounds every creative decision in authenticity. The result is a production whose attention to detail never feels academic for its own sake. Instead, it gives the story a lived-in honesty that allows the audience to engage with history as something painfully human rather than comfortably distant. That humanity is ultimately what makes Sally & Tom so extraordinary.

Parks offers no tidy moral arithmetic. The play resists the temptation to divide its characters into heroes and villains. Instead, we’re presented with people — past and present — trying to navigate systems far larger than themselves while carrying the impossible weight of choice, survival, ambition, and legacy. Every conversation uncovers another uncomfortable truth. Every certainty dissolves into another difficult question.

That refusal to provide easy answers is precisely what makes Sally & Tom so extraordinary. It trusts audiences enough to wrestle with contradiction instead of escaping it. It's the kind of storytelling that lingers long after the drive home because it refuses to offer easy absolution.

By the end of the evening, you won't leave with neatly packaged conclusions. You'll leave with questions, conversations to continue, and perhaps a deeper appreciation for the uncomfortable work of confronting history honestly.

And that's exactly what great theater should do.

---

When: July 22–August 23, 2026 
Where: The Kleberg at Zach | 1426 W Riverside Dr. | Austin, TX | 78704 
Tickets: Start at $28 and are available at Zach’s box office – 512-476-0541 x1, zachtheater.org.