Tome and I began working on our adaptation of George Aiken's play -- itself adapted from Harriet Beecher Stowe's novel -- as part of the Lincoln Center Directors Lab. We felt the play's history had become misunderstood, and the term "Uncle Tom" had become an epithet that reduced the original character to a stereotype of acquiescence and a betrayer of his people. Our adaptation aims to restore Uncle Tom's name and to re-envsion his story as one of self-assertion, faith, and human dignity.