{"id":796196,"date":"2026-05-14T16:26:22","date_gmt":"2026-05-14T16:26:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/796196\/"},"modified":"2026-05-14T16:26:22","modified_gmt":"2026-05-14T16:26:22","slug":"philly-theaters-go-all-in-telling-americas-story-ahead-of-250th","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/796196\/","title":{"rendered":"Philly theaters go all in telling America\u2019s story ahead of 250th"},"content":{"rendered":"

Love Philly? So do we. Let\u2019s be friends. Sign up for the Billy Penn newsletter today<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Once upon a time, nearly 50 years before Lin-Manuel Miranda\u2019s<\/a> shot at history with \u201cHamilton\u201d<\/a> there was another blockbuster American history musical, \u201c1776: The Musical.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

Everyone bought tickets. Everyone went. The magic of theater, with the way the scripts and music bought dry characters to life, made \u201c1776\u201d such a hit that, in 1972, the play, which debuted on Broadway in 1969, became a movie.<\/p>\n

Now, \u201c1776\u201d is back again, just in time to celebrate the nation\u2019s 250th birthday at the nation\u2019s oldest theater, Philadelphia\u2019s Walnut Street Theatre. The musical, on stage now, runs through May 31.<\/p>\n

But the Walnut, founded in 1808,<\/a> 32 years after the Declaration of Independence was signed, isn\u2019t the only theater in town presenting shows in honor of the semiquincentennial.<\/a>\u00a0 (Extra points if you can pronounce semiquincentennial or say it five times real fast!)<\/p>\n

On stage now at the Lantern Theater Co.<\/a> through June 7 is Lloyd Suh\u2019s<\/a> \u201cFranklinland,\u201d<\/a> The play explores the explosive relationship between Benjamin Franklin and his loyalist son William, who rebels against his father and becomes the Royal Governor of New Jersey.<\/p>\n

In June, Pig Iron Theatre Co.<\/a> will present \u201cFranklin\u2019s Key,\u201d<\/a> a sci-fi thriller with magical stage effects, starring two teenagers who need to protect Ben Franklin\u2019s technologies from dark forces that threaten to upend civilization.<\/p>\n

Skipping ahead a few decades, the Wilma<\/a> offers \u201cThe America Play,\u201d about a gravedigger turned Abraham Lincoln impersonator. Wilma\u2019s co-artistic director Lindsay Smiling,<\/a> who not only stars as Lincoln, but is also directing the play, gets assassinated five or six times in every performance.<\/p>\n

Appropriately titled for the semiquincentennial, \u201cThe America Play,\u201d<\/a> May 19-31, comes on the heels of Wilma\u2019s previous historical\/hysterical production, \u201cThe Most Spectacularly Lamentable Trial of Miz Martha Washington,\u201d<\/a> about the first First Lady\u2019s fears concerning the enslaved people in her household.<\/p>\n

At the Walnut, Jeffrey Coon,<\/a> the theatre\u2019s development director, returns to the stage as Richard Henry Lee,<\/a> the likeable delegate to the Continental Congress from Virginia who actually proposed the motion that the colonies split from England.<\/p>\n

This is Coon\u2019s second time acting in \u201c1776\u201d at the Walnut. Twenty-nine years ago, when he was 26 and Walnut first staged \u201c1776,\u201d Coon played a courier who gets beat up.<\/p>\n

Coon admires both \u201c1776\u201d and \u201cHamilton.\u201d In an ideal world, he said, he\u2019d love to see them in repertory rotation, with one show offered for the matinee and the other in the evening.<\/p>\n

\"\"Isaac Ripley, Jordan Eck, and Bill Van Horn appear in Walnut Street Theatre\u2019s \u201c1776.\u201d (courtesy Walnut Street Theatre)<\/p>\n

\u201cThey were both revolutionary,\u201d he said. \u201cBoth took a novel approach to what we all assumed we learned in junior high school. They both let the story and the humans who inhabit it become much more of a presence than they ever were in textbooks.\u201d<\/p>\n

Coon hopes the audience will leave \u201c1776\u201d appreciating how wonderful and rare it was for a group of people to decide to break away from their own country. \u201cBy all rights,\u201d he said, \u201cthis should have never worked.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n<\/blockquote>\n

But for our nation\u2019s birth to work, people with strong and different opinions \u201chad to come to the table and have the discussion because they cared for the greater good,\u201d he said. That\u2019s a lesson for our time.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cGosh, it\u2019s funny,\u201d Coon said. \u201cIt\u2019s not this stodgy history lesson.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"Scott Greer\u2019s Benjamin Franklin nods off in Walnut Street Theatre\u2019s \u201c1776\u201d. (courtesy Walnut Street Theatre)<\/p>\n

\u201cMost people who know the show like it. People who don\u2019t know the show come and realize how damn funny it is. It\u2019s a really great play and really great music. The script is so cracker-jack good. It\u2019s so smart.\u201d<\/p>\n

At the Wilma, the underlying message of \u201cThe America Play\u201d has to do with how we understand ourselves and our history. What or who is left out?<\/p>\n

\u201cFor me, this is about how we interact with history. How we tell stories, how the past has effects on what we do today,\u201d Smiling said.<\/p>\n

In theatrical studies, he explained, the play is sliced and diced as students appreciate its unique writing and try to parse its many meanings.<\/p>\n

Playwright Suzan-Lori Parks,<\/a> a Pulitzer-Prize winner who once had a residency at the Wilma, is known for her rep-and-rev style. Rep and rev stands for repetition and revision. Evoking jazz rhythms, phrases appear again and again throughout the play, each time inviting deeper consideration of their meaning.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt breaks form. It\u2019s non-linear. It is very dense with historical references. It\u2019s dense with word play and metaphor and abstraction. It takes a lot of work to understand what\u2019s going on. It takes a lot to unpack it,\u201d Smiling said. \u201cInstead of the focus narrowing, it keeps expanding.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"Wilma Co-Artistic Director Lindsay Smiling directs and stars as \u2018The Foundling Father,\u2019 a Black Abraham Lincoln impersonator in the Wilma Theater\u2019s upcoming production of\u00a0The\u00a0America\u00a0Play\u00a0by Pulitzer Prize-winner Suzan-Lori Parks (Courtesy of the Wilma Theater)<\/p>\n

Smiling plays a gravedigger, a Black Abraham Lincoln impersonator known as the \u201cFoundling Father.\u201d He runs \u201cThe Great Hole of History,\u201d a tourist attraction. Turns out that what makes it popular is that tourists who pay the penny price can assassinate the president \u2013 over and over again.<\/p>\n

The Abraham Lincoln show takes place in a hole, creating a challenge for set designer Matthew Zumbo. Smiling said the entire theater is turned into a hole with old props hanging everywhere. \u201cIn the midst of it,\u201d Smiling said, \u201cthere is a huge 16-foot Abraham Lincoln head that is almost this deity, this icon.\u201d<\/p>\n