When Pages Breathe: The Rebellion Records

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Inside Princeton’s Revolutionary Archive

As part of Princeton University’s programming commemorating the nation’s 250th anniversary, the performance series When Pages Breathe presents “The Rebellion Records,” an evening of live performance, archival storytelling, and historical reflection set within the Princeton University Library’s exhibition “Nursery of Rebellion: Princeton & the American Revolution,” curated by Gabriel Swift Librarian for Early American Collections at the Princeton University Library Special Collections and Michael Blaakman Associate Professor of History in the Department of History.

Created and curated by award-winning storyteller Chesney Snow, Lecturer in the Lewis Center for the Arts, When Pages Breathe transforms historical texts into live performance. The series brings together theater artists, scholars, and audiences to explore how archival documents such as letters, diaries, pamphlets, poems, and political writings carry the voices, struggles, and dreams of those who lived through rebellion.

For this special event, actors will perform oral interpretations of documents drawn directly from the exhibition, illuminating the human stories behind the American Revolution. Through letters written in the uncertainty of war, poems that questioned the meaning of liberty, and firsthand accounts of a nation in formation, When Pages Breathe: The Rebellion Records invites audiences to hear the American Revolution not as a distant mythologized history, but as living testimony.

Following the performance, a conversation moderated by Pulitzer Prize–winning playwright Martyna Majok will explore how artists engage the past, how revolutionary ideals continue to resonate today, and how storytelling reanimates the historical record.

The When Pages Breathe series is dedicated to the memory of William Noel who was the John T. Maltsberger III ’55 Associate University Librarian for Special Collections.

With the generous support of the Friends of Princeton University Library, Princeton University Humanities Council and Princeton University Humanities Initiative.

Program:

4:00 p.m. - 5:30 p.m. Milberg Gallery special opening hours

5:30 p.m. - 6:00 p.m. Refreshments available (Upper Hyphen, East Pyne Hall)

6:00 p.m. - 7:30 p.m. Readings, panel discussion, and audience Q&A

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Co-hosted with: GradFUTURES

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