A spooky, kid-centric quest to set some of Salem's quirkier spirits free.

In October 2023, History Alive debuted its newest interactive October programming with No Ghosts at the Old Town Hall - bring new life to the space with family-friendly activities. No Ghosts at the Old Town Hall takes participants on an adventure through the building to find friendly but frustrated spirits looking to be set free. While attending, guests encountered some scaley spirits looking for help to release their souls! On their journey to free the spirits trapped inside many ghost hunting guests even found themselves leaving with a sweet treat to snack on.

In 2023, No Ghosts at the Old Town Hall ran at 7pm and 8:30 pm Thursdays, Saturdays, and Sunday nights in October. Get ready to catch some ghosts and help free their spirits that are being held hostage the next time we return!

Charlotte’s Salem - A Walking Tour

First created for Essex National Heritage Area’s annual Trails and Sails 2021 programming, this immersive walking tour introduced visitors to Salem through the eyes of abolitionist, poet and teacher, Charlotte Forten as a young, African-American woman in the years leading up to the Civil War. Charlotte describes the Salem that she knows and shows her guests locations of importance to her story and to the fight for equal rights for African Americans.

In 2022, with support from the Essex Heritage Partnership Grant Program, History Alive created a portable adaptation of the Charlotte’s Salem experience to provide accessibility to a wider audience, including those with mobility or economic barriers.

This program has also been supported in part by a grant from the Salem Cultural Council, a local agency which is supported by the Mass Cultural Council, a state agency.

Tree of Care + Wonder: Fashioning for Freedom 

In collaboration with Salem’s Artist in Residence, Claudia Paraschiv, History Alive presented “Tree of Care + Wonder: Fashioning for Freedom” in July 2023. The event blended the entities’ joint interests in social justice, self-expression, immigration narrative and the ways people create a better world. The evening featured the stories of Anne Bradstreet, Phillip English, Jenny Slew, The Public Universal Friend, Sarah Parker Remond and Harriet Hosmer. The program, featuring a narrated fashion show, live music, a conversation circle and a mini migration with The Tree of Care + Wonder around Derby Square, was free and open to everyone.

Intern Laetitia Kotto Kotto Mouyema, who portrayed Jenny Slew, and who contributed to the wardrobe design said, “True freedom is emotional freedom. We live in a time with a lot of material freedoms but to express your real emotions is to truly be free. When I wear something I question ‘Does this make me feel safe? Does this make me feel strong? Do I feel like a princess?”

Toward the end of the evening participants were invited to share their thoughts about how they experience freedom through the fashion choices they make in their own lives.

This program was supported in part by a grant from the Salem Cultural Council, a local agency which is supported by the Mass Cultural Council, a state agency. Supported in part by a grant from the Creative County Initiative of the Essex County Community Foundation.

On August 18th, History Alive, Inc. launched its 2022 season with a mini-festival called “The Broad Pathway of the Sea”, with a different experience each day through August 21st. The name of the festival is taken from Hester Prynne’s line to Arthur Dimmesdale when they meet privately in the forest in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s novel, The Scarlet Letter. “Is the world so narrow? There is still the broad pathway of the sea. It brought you here and it can bear you back again.” Four theatrical events, tied together by an ocean theme, will enliven different locations throughout Salem’s historic waterfront.

The mini-festival started the evening of Thursday, August 18th, with Quest for the Rich East—a combination trading/scavenger hunt game set in Salem’s “Golden Age of Sail”. Teams of participants, organized as merchant ships, raced each other around the world (downtown Salem) solving puzzles, and trading for exotic goods in the hopes of turning the highest profit back in Salem. The quest started and ended at the Old Town Hall, the former site of “King” Elias Hasket Derby’s mansion. Derby was the first investor to trade directly with China. The Derby estate, between Essex and Front Streets, was once waterfront property.

On Friday evening, at 6:30, History Alive’s immersive version of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, took over The House of the Seven Gables museum. The piece walks with Hawthorne as he entrusts his ideas for a new novel to the audience—his intellectual comrades. Locations around the historic campus form the backdrop for his imagination as the scenes come to life before his companion’s eyes. A cast of 22 people from all over Essex County populated the 1640’s colony. Paul Riopelle, most recently of Cincinnati Shakespeare Company, played Hawthorne.

On Saturday afternoon, at 2PM, guests walked with abolitionist Charlotte Forten (Samantha Searles of Philadelphia) and heard how the sea relates to underground railroad efforts and other aspects of black culture in 1850’s Salem.

On Sunday, at 2PM, The National Park Service Maritime Park hosted Two Points Off the Weather Bow. The musical adventure, taken from 19th century ship logs and historical reminiscences, invites audiences aboard an 1850’s whaler to become the crew of a hunting adventure. Two Points Off the Weather Bow was written by Juice Wacker and was directed by Jennifer Emerson, both of Salem.

Step on board the BALLMER for a shanty-filled, high-seas whaling adventure.

Salem is known world over for the tragedy of 1692. But Salem is rich with other stories, innovations, adventures.

The Spirit of Salem gets at the heart of what makes Salem the artistic and entrepreneurial place it is. If you look around the city today and see a cultural and community life you admire, the film will introduce you to the characters who helped instill those values into the city, spirits who still walk our streets, if you have the eyes to see them!

A collaboration with CinemaSalem.

Listen as Nathaniel Hawthorne shares an unforgettable narrative.

History Alive, Inc. is pleased to present an all new radio-show style production of Nathaniel Hawthorne's classic tale of love, shame, alienation and forgiveness. Originally streaming in three parts weekly, beginning on Mother's Day, Sunday, May 10, 2020, we are pleased to now offer the complete performance for your listening enjoyment.

Experience a night of interactive theater, mystery and history.

Be the first to experience Art & Craft – the intersection of romance, art, witchcraft and scandal brought to life through a brand new interactive theater experience created exclusively for the Salem Inn.

This intriguing journey back in time will explore the very real relationships, tribulations, and challenges that surrounded some of the city’s most prominent historical figures played out in period authentic houses and rooms – with you right in the middle of it all.

Custom Written for The Salem Inn. Concept by Kristina Wacome Stevick. Script by Macey Jennings. Directed by Carl Schultz. Stage Managed by Mikayla Bishop. Tech Direction by Marc Ewart. Costumes by Carrie Midura. Featuring Alyssa Bené, Jenny Johnson, Max Sklar, Rachel Stigers, and Martha Davis.

A collaboration with The Salem Inn.

Custom-written for The Witch House in Salem

Step into an authentic 17th century home as its troubled inhabitants come to grips with witchcraft in their midst.

Two decades prior to the infamous Salem Witch Trials, a well-respected, God-fearing household is falling apart. The audience, like the proverbial "fly on the wall", eavesdrops on the conflicts of men, women and children in the battle for the soul of New England. A young girl is tortured by an invisible malady. What--or Who--is to blame? Has the devil been raised on New England's frontier?

Custom-written for Salem’s “Witch House”—the only 17th century mansion with direct ties to the infamous witch trials of 1692. Concept and script by Macey Jennings. Directed by Carl Schultz. Stage Managed by Alyssa Bené.

The year is 1854.

Patty and Phillip have escaped as far north as Salem from their life in slavery. The Fugitive Slave act punishes anyone who assists runaways. With the help of famous Abolitionists Sarah Parker Remond and Charlotte Forten, you are on the Committee of Vigilance, a secret group whose job it is to assist self-emancipated slaves determine whether it is to hide in Salem or to try to escape to “Paradise”.

Concept by Alexia Rowe and Kristina Wacome Stevick. Script by Alexia Rowe, and developed by the ensemble, under the direction of Kristina Stevick. Stage Managed by Ben Janey. Featuring Victoria Blaides, Kathy-Ann Hart, Adeniyi Samuel, Carl Schultz, Samantha Searles and Juice Wacker.

This is Not a Bill is supported by The Salem Cultural Council, The Hamilton Cultural Council, and the Lynne Cultural Council, local agencies of the Massachusetts Cultural Council.

It’s 1830

82-year old Captain Joseph White lays murdered in his own bed. All night at his lavish party, guests have been machinating a murder of the crusty old miser, overheard by you, the Committee of Vigilance. Senator Daniel Webster has been ridiculously undercover and will guide the audience to the gleeful end of the evening.

Written by Mark Stevick. Directed by M. Lynda Robinson. Stage Managed by Julia Murphy. Featuring Alyssa Bene, Riley Lucas, Carl Schultz, Juice Wacker, Daniel Lefferts, Macey Jennings and Jenny Johnson.

It’s 1692—In the woods and dark interiors of Pioneer Village

Would you join the witch-hunt to protect yourself? “Witch | Hunters” gathered clues from the poetry and ritual of an herbalist, a minister, an afflicted girl with spectral sight and a witch-finder general. In order to exit the damnation of the village, the hunters had to gather each of the four elements—earth, air, fire and water. If able to restore the balance which had been upset by the devil’s intrusion into Salem they might be allowed an escape.

Written and directed by Kristina Wacome Stevick. Stage Managed by Marc Ewart.

Photo credit: Mary Anne Morgan

An unnerving nighttime immersion into the world of the infamous “afflicted girls” at America’s first living history museum, Pioneer Village.

Spritways travelled around the three acre Puritan village by candle and bonfire light using 17th c. poetry, narrative, chanting, found text and folklore to create a psychological experience something like the midnight terrors of a 17th century adolescent conscience.

Custom-written for Pioneer Village, by cast devising. Devising directed by Kristina Wacome Stevick. Original Devising Cast: Anne Colpitts, Liz Conden, Brittany Perkins, Trisha Hail, and Julianne Richards. Directed by Mary Saville. Stage Managed by Bekah Tatro.

Custom-written for The Spice Festival at Pioneer Village, women's history month events, fundraisers for clinics and medical classrooms. 

Travail takes the audience on a tour of medical practice in New England over the last 300 years, specifically the history of women's heath, obstetrical care and birth customs. It follows the struggle of a traditional midwife, whom we first meet in the 18th century, as she endeavors to practice her vocation in the increasingly flooded field of male, professionalized, European-trained doctors. The play takes us through the peaks and valleys of a midwive's status, through the 19th and 20th centuries, into a contemporary birthing center.

Written by Kristina Wacome Stevick. Staged reading directed by Sarah Mann.