Download STARRING ABE LINCOLN - Theatre For Young America

Prepared by Sheryl Bryant, Director of Education, Theatre for Young America
An educational supplement to the live theatre experience of
STARRING ABE LINCOLN
This program is presented in part by the Missouri Arts Council, a stage agency, and the
National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency, which believes that a great nation
deserves great art.
THE PLAYWRIGHT: Gene Mackey, Founder and Executive Director of Theatre for Young
America had three reasons for writing this play in 1979. One was to honor Lincoln, our 16th
president of the United States. A second reason was to highlight Lincoln’s great sense of humor.
Although many of his stories would be classified as “corny” today, people of his time thought his
stories hilarious. To see him as a jokester helps the audience to see more sides of him than the
stresses of his life. A third reason Gene wrote the play was to show how important Lincoln with
his compassion, honesty, and humility was to human rights history. Gene chose to rewrite and
present it again in 2015 because of the racial turmoil that spread in 2014 to many parts of the
world. Gene has written over 45 plays for young audiences, several of them, such as
POCAHONTAS AND THE PILGRIMS and WOLF IN THE WINGS, also being based upon
research of true historical events.
THE PLAY SETTING: In this play you asked to forget about the modern
world. You are taken back in time to 1865. We are in Ford’s Theatre in
Washington, D.C. On the stage is the setting for OUR AMERICAN COUSIN,
the play that was running when Lincoln was assassinated by John Wilkes
Booth as as he was watching the play from a right side balcony. It is April 14
at 10:07pm. There are footlights on the stage floor because that is how stages
were lit in 1865. Booth is portrayed by a voice behind Lincoln. Lincoln stops
the show and his death and says he would like to relive parts of his life before
he was shot.
THE PLAY STYLE: Although the play is about real, historical characters, the play is not
realistic in style. Style is defined as “the manner of presentation.” STARRING ABE LINCOLN
is a dream play, not a photograph of reality. The modern day actor cast as Abraham Lincoln
stops the play onstage and says he wants a little break from true history before getting back to
real life in 1865. The stage actors (who are playing the actual actors that were onstage at the
time) agree to do so and thus begins the story of Abraham Lincoln. All the actors except Lincoln
will play many different historical characters so an antique trunk is brought to the stage full of
costumes and properties to be used for this dramatization of parts of his life. Listening to the
Bible in school had been very important in Abe’s early education, although the family did not
have the money to own one until Abe was ten years old. Abraham Lincoln quoted many Bible
verses in his speeches so the playwright uses one of Lincoln’s favorite passages as a framework
for the play: ECCLESIASTES, CHAPTER 3, VERSES 1-8. King James Version:
To everything there is a season and a time to every purpose under the heaven:
A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which was
planted
A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up;
A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance;
A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to
embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;
A time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away;
A time to rend, and a time to sow; a time to keep silence, and a time to
speak;
A time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace.
LINCOLN’S ANECDOTES OF HIS LIFE: After Lincoln takes the stage
with the actors, he reenacts certain highlights of his life he wants us to know.
He was born near Hodgenville, Kentucky, on February 12 of 1809. His family was poor and
lived in a one room log cabin. He enacts stories of his school days. He enacts the story of
becoming a store owner in New Salem, Illinois, where he earns the nickname “Honest Abe.” He
tells us how he became a lawyer and a congressman in Springfield, Illinois. He tells both
humorous and sad tales of his courtships with women, eventually marrying Mary Todd, from the
South, in 1842. We look in on his great debates with his rival Stephen Douglas, the congressman
who believed in “popular sovereignty,” allowing states to choose their own position on slavery.
We see Lincoln’s rise to the Presidency in 1860, and his meetings with abolitionist Frederick
Douglass who called Lincoln “one ray of hope.” With his writing of The Emancipation
Proclamation in 1862, Lincoln got another nickname “The Great Emancipator.” He detested
slavery and wanted to see it abolished. We learn of the famous Gettysburg address, his
reelection in 1864 and the end of the Civil War in 1865. After President Lincoln completes what
he wants to share, he and the actors resume their places, and the play moves to its inevitable
conclusion. Booth ended his mortal life with a bullet, but Lincoln’s spirit will never die. We
Americans won’t let him die.
INTERESTING FACTS ABOUT ABRAHAM LINCOLN’S LIFE AND LEGACY:
• LINCOLN WAS BORN on February 12, 1809. This year (2015) he would be 206 years
old. If you plan on a birthday celebration like Theatre for Young America, please note
the Lincoln’s favorite cake was White Almond Cake.
• LINCOLN’S DEATH was April 15, 1865. 2015 marks the 150th anniversary of his
assassination on April 14 and his death on the morning of April 15.
• PRESIDENT’S DAY is a federal holiday that celebrates the birthdays of George
Washington, our first president, and Abraham Lincoln, our 16th president. It is now held
on the third Monday of February. In 2015 it is on February 22.
CROSS-CURRICULAR ACTIVITIES RELATED TO LINCOLN
• Design a campaign poster for Abraham Lincoln to persuade folks to vote for him as your
school’s class president. Include a slogan and an illustration.
• Create your own obituary for President Lincoln. Follow the format you learn from
searching newspapers of today.
• Recall a joke that was told in the play and reenact Lincoln telling it or act it out in that
scene with a classmate.
• Since 1909 Lincoln’s likeness has been honored on the penny coin. It was the first
regular issue coin that was a likeness of an actual person in the United States. His
likeness is also on the front of the Five Dollar Bill. Examine these two and compare the
images of Lincoln.
• National Lost Penny Day is also celebrated on February 12, Lincoln’s
Birthday. Organize a committee to have a Lincoln penny drive for
Lincoln’s Birthday or for President’s Day. Plan how you will announce
it and ask people to donate their pennies. Decide to whom you will give
the money after you collect the pennies. Books were very important to
Lincoln. Maybe buy books for a preschool that needs them?
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS OR WRITING PROMPTS
1. Does Abraham Lincoln’s life remind you of your life in any way? Describe ways you
might be similar or different from him.
2. What inspires you about the life of Lincoln?
3. What challenges did Lincoln have to overcome to accomplish all he did?
4. How can we make sure that our government is truly “of the people, by the people, for the
people?”
5. Do you think all Americans are treated fairly and equally? Why or why not?
6. What actor or actress did you especially enjoy? In what role? Why?
WEB SIGHTS FOR RELATED INFORMATION ABOUT ABRAHAM LINCOLN,
HISTORIC SITES, AND MONUMENTS
• www.abrahamlincolnonline.org/lincoln/sites has a wonderful tour of the reconstructed
pioneer village of New Salem, Il. where Lincoln lived and worked as a young adult. The
site also shows his home and offices in Springfield, Il. The site also shows his burial
place in Oak Ridge Cemetery in Illinois.
• www.amazon.com/...CHILDREN’SBOOKS-ABRAHAM-LINCOLN/ has a listing of
many fiction and nonfiction books with age recommendations.
• www.fordstheatre.org/home/explore-lincoln has drawings and stories about the theatre
on the night that Lincoln was shot while watching the play. It is now a national historic
museum as well as the Peterson house across the street where the wounded Lincoln was
taken. ( During the run of STARRING ABE LINCOLN at Theatre for Young America,
the Ford’s Theatre will be running a new play about Mary Todd Lincoln, entitled THE
WIDOW LINCOLN.)
• www.nps.gov/moru/historyculture shows the South Dakota National Park that features
impressive sculptures of the heads of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore
Roosevelt, and Abraham Lincoln in the Black Hills of South Dakota.
• www.nationalmall.org/nationalmemorials/monuments.com has
photos and information about the Lincoln Memorial and Reflecting
Pool in Washington DC. Many events have happened in that space
as well as housing the large sculpture of President Lincoln sitting.
• www.randomhouse.com/teachers has educator’s guide for several
Lincoln books.
• www.scholastic.com contains much information, lesson plans, and
activities for learning about Lincoln.
A SELECTION OF BOOKS AND MOVIES THAT UNCOVER SOME NEW AND
INTERESTING INSIGHTS INTO THE LIFE OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN
• Fleming, Candace, THE LINCOLNS: A SCRAPBOOK LOOK AT ABRAHAM AND
MARY, Schwartz & Wade Books, 2008.
• Spielberg, Steven, LINCOLN, DreamWorks Pictures, 2013.
• Waugh, John C. ONE MAN GREAT ENOUGH: ABRAHAM LINCOLN’S ROAD TO
CIVIL WAR, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt publishers, 2009.
• Zeitz, Joshua, LINCOLNS’S BOYS: JOHN HAY, JOHN NICOLAY, AND THE WAR
FOR LINCOLN’S IMAGE, Penguin Books, 2014. On a personal note, this book is a
favorite because my mother was a 5th cousin by marriage to John George Nicolay,
President Lincoln’s personal secretary and friend and biographer. They met and began to
work together in 1854 in Springfield, ILL. Lincoln told Nicolay that his motto was
“Fairness for All.”—Sheryl Bryant, Director of Education