If She Stood centers on the Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society, a multi-racial, collective established in 1833 to abolish slavery and, almost accidentally, frame the burgeoning discourse on women’s rights. These pioneers of the modern social justice movement include Sarah Grimke, Sarah Mapps Douglass, Sarah Pugh, and, fifty years later, Angelina Weld Grimke.

What makes a woman surrender her private life to the public good?

Does she fight for other’s freedom to find her own?

Must alliances forged in political opposition eventually crumble in divisive compromise?

Many of the Anti-Slavery Society’s members were also Quaker and the performance borrows rituals of Quaker Meeting; begin with communal silence, delve into spontaneous solo testimony, end with a handshake.