Recipient of the 2004 Jeff Award for Best New Work, Free Man of Color is the story of John Newton Templeton, an ex-slave who attended Ohio University and graduated in 1828, thirty-five years before the end of slavery. 

When John Newton Templeton is unexpectedly freed after his master’s death, he migrates to the free state of Ohio where he meets the Presbyterian minister Robert Wilson, an avowed abolitionist.  Wilson, who had taken on the challenge of serving as president of the then fledging Ohio University, saw the opportunity to use the promising young ex-slave to prove to the pro-slavery factions in America that African-Americans were capable of the same academic excellence as whites.  President Wilson brings Templeton to his home in Athens, Ohio where Templeton works as the president’s personal “student servant” while attending classes.  Although Templeton excels in most areas of study, his achievements in other areas are quite different than what Wilson had wanted, needed, and expected.  In this play about race, culture, and the differences between education and assimilation in America, Wilson is forced to reevaluate his abolitionist views and Templeton is forced to examine the reason he was chosen to be the "first."

Free Man of Color was commissioned by Ohio University in commemoration of its Bicentennial Celebration.  

It received its world premiere production at Victory Gardens Theater in Chicago in January 2004.  In March of 2004, that production was moved to Ohio University in Athens, Ohio, to commemorate Ohio University’s Bicentennial.