Abigail and Patience: Feature Film
ABIGAIL AND PATIENCE is a historically based drama highlighting the parallels in the lives of U.S. Congressional staffer, Patience Perez, in 2020 and Abigail Adams in 1776 – as both women work to secure women’s equity and inclusion in the U.S. Constitution during two chaotic periods in history.
The parallel stories move back and forth between Massachusetts in 1775 and 1776 to California, and Washington DC in 2020 and 2021 as the two stories trace the hidden connections between two women. Abigail is a future First Lady and mother of another future U.S. President during the American Revolutionary War and in the months before the American colonies declare their independence from Britain. Patience is a savvy, beloved U.S. Congressional staffer from California in 2020 and 2021 who fights for the rights of racial minorities and women. The story lines play out in non-chronological order with events primarily being shown from the perspectives of the two main characters.
Patience and Abigail live more than two centuries apart and are of different racial backgrounds but have remarkably similar experiences as they endure gender inequity, the difficulties of keeping one’s family safe during pandemics (Patience loses her daughter to COVID 19 and Abigail loses her mother to smallpox) and civil unrest including the takeover of the U.S. Capitol in 2021 and war in 1775 and 1776, and as they both fight for gender and racial equality in the United States.
The first major focus of the story is a letter that Abigail Adams writes to her husband, John Adams, in 1776 asking him to include women in the founding constitutional documents months before the U.S. Declaration of Independence is written. The second focus of the story shifts to 245 years later in 2020 and 2021 when women have yet to be fully included in the U.S. Constitution.
The film ends in 2021 with U.S. Congress staffer Patience Perez talking via Zoom to a group of college students about the fact that 245 years after the Abigail Adams letter was written and 100 years after the Equal Rights Amendment was introduced – women have still not been given equal rights in the U.S. Constitution.
Story and Screenplay by Zel Anders.