🎭STAGE: "The Return of Benjamin Lay" and 📚STORY: "The Fearless Benjamin Lay"

Join Audrey at the Quintessance Theater in Mt. Airy to watch the Philadelphia premier of The Return of Benjamin Lay. After the show, we'll gather for dinner at Toska (across the street) to discuss the play and the paired nonfiction book, The Fearless Benjamin Lay. Did you know that Lay spent time in the Philadelphia area living in a cave-like dwelling surrounded by a library of two hundred books? Just another reason to love him!

Limit 15. First pay goes.

FEE: $47
Tickets are first pay, goes and limited to 15 people.
HOW TO PAY: (use Friends and Family or else add $10 fee to cover processing charges) Please mention the event or event date in your payment.
Venmo - @audrey-Heller1 (last four of phone # are 4478)
PayPal - https://www.paypal.me/AudreyBug

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2:45pm STAGE: The Return of Benjamin Lay
Show starts at 3pm
Where: Quintessance Theater
7137 Germantown Ave
Mt. Airy

### 2025: In the silence of a Quaker meeting house:

Benjamin Lay – shepherd, sailor, revolutionary, and the British Empire's first revolutionary abolitionist – returns from the grave almost 300 years after his death, as feisty and unpredictable as ever.
The 4ft “David” confronts the “Goliath” of slavery as he demands once again to be readmitted into the Quaker community that disowned him for ideas considered dangerous and disruptive.
How far will he go to share his prophetic vision knowing the cost of protest?
Sweeping across the centuries and continents, The Return of Benjamin Lay is a hallucinatory exploration of the list of a radical who became one of the earliest revolutionary abolitionists.

5:30pm DINNER: Toska
(across the street from theater
Menu: Varied and includes vegan, gluten free and veg options

Combining their love for food and craft beer. At Toska, the team craft wood-fired pizzas and a variety of dishes all complemented by their own handcrafted beers. Toska has distinctive flavors, warm ambiance, and the brothers' dedication to preserving their Albanian heritage in Philadelphia, PA.

THE STORY: The Fearless Benjamin Lay by Marcus Rediker
Genre: nonfiction

### 1738 In the silence of a Quaker meeting house:

The little-known story of an eighteenth-century Quaker dwarf who fiercely attacked slavery and imagined a new, more humane way of life

In The Fearless Benjamin Lay, renowned historian Marcus Rediker chronicles the transatlantic life and times of a singular man—a Quaker dwarf who demanded the total, unconditional emancipation of all enslaved Africans around the world. Mocked and scorned by his contemporaries, Lay was unflinching in his opposition to slavery, often performing colorful guerrilla theater to shame slave masters, insisting that human bondage violated the fundamental principles of Christianity. He drew on his ideals to create a revolutionary way of life, one that embodied the proclamation “no justice, no peace.”

Lay was born in 1682 in Essex, England. His philosophies, employments, and places of residence—spanning England, Barbados, Philadelphia, and the open seas—were markedly diverse over the course of his life. He worked as a shepherd, glove maker, sailor, and bookseller. His worldview was an astonishing combination of Quakerism, vegetarianism, animal rights, opposition to the death penalty, and abolitionism.

While in Abington, Philadelphia, Lay lived in a cave-like dwelling surrounded by a library of two hundred books, and it was in this unconventional abode where he penned a fiery and controversial book against bondage, which Benjamin Franklin published in 1738.

Happy Reading!
Audrey

Housekeeping!
Here are the Club’s Basic Rules and Liability Release. You should read them because by signing up for an event you agree to them! 🙂

-------------------The below is silly babble just for the Meetup algorithm - no need for book club members to read this!-------------------------------

live theater events and book discussions with socializing book club members who love hobbies in Philadelphia are such a fun way to meet new friends and be social with book loving book club members who like to read and explore authors, house tours, museums and other walking tours and try new activities such as hiking, reading, craft, hobbies, book clubs and more! It's especially fun for a book club to go on indoor tours and outdoor and indoor adventures with all the book club friends who like to socializ explore and try new things and meet new friends who are old or new in town.