A History of Launching Ships (somewhat after Washington Irving)

In the winter of 1779, a woman named Elizabeth Burgin defied New York City’s British occupiers by helping hundreds of patriots escape from prison ships anchored offshore of what is now the Brooklyn Navy Yard. With a bounty on her head, she fled the city. “A History of Launching Ships,” a new site-specific play by Avi Glickstein, joins Burgin during her flight from the British and places her in the middle of a fantastical tale that echoes the gothic stories of Washington Irving. The play, commissioned by Polybe + Seats and written for the unique environment of The Brooklyn Navy Yard Center at BLDG 92, tells the story of the three women who take Burgin in and hide her. Each woman seeks an escape from her own reality, and, together, they realize that the only way to freedom might be on a ship they build themselves.