Creekview High School in Canton, GA, home of the Grizzlies, has joined the Festival. That puts our current total of participating high schools at six!

Canton–population ~8,000–was named after a city in China in 1834 because its founders were determined to make it a silk production mecca. Well…it didn’t really work out…but the name stuck anyway!

Now Canton is known for it’s historic downtown, historic Canton Theatre and history-loving drama geeks who want to make history with the rest of us.

Drama teacher and Creekview Theater Director, Matt Tamanini, has chosen Warren G. Harding for our video project. Did it have anything to do with Harding being, arguably, the worst President we’ve ever had? Was it because of Harding’s silk pajamas? Nope.

Tamanini and Harding are both Native Ohioans, so Matt couldn’t resist. See? This is a recurring theme lately….personal connections with Presidents, yet another bright thread in this grand, national tapestry.

Welcome aboard, Creekview! We love high schools. And that’s a fact–not an opinion.

As part of the Festival’s mission and vision, each participating producer is being encouraged to find some creative medium for expression and exploration along the theme of the play. Lake Forest College, although the first production in the lineup, has set the bar high with a Presidential Portrait Gallery Exhibition involving the entire community.

This week, I spoke with Elizabeth Hyzy, one of the actors in the show and the project coordinator for the presidential-themed exhibition.

Tell me a little bit about yourself.
I’m a sophomore at Lake Forest College, majoring in English and theater. Along with theater, I am president of SNAP, a Writing Center tutor, and a school ambassador. I have been doing theater since sixth grade, but I have to say that I have never been this excited for a show.

Franklin D Roosevelt by Brittany Eude

What’s the “elevator speech” for this project?
The portrait gallery is a way to get the entire Lake Forest community involved with 44
Plays for 44 Presidents. We assigned canvases and presidents to student, faculty, and staff
volunteers. With the canvases, the artists can capture their assigned presidents in any way they please—weather it is through a traditionally painted portrait or an abstract collage. Since this show is about history and people, we want to give the community the chance to honor history independently and artistically.

James Monroe by Grant Alexander

What inspired the idea?
The Neo-Futurists (the original writers and performers of 44 Plays) have a Hall of Presidents in their Neo-Futurarium. With this in mind, Dennis Mae, the artistic director of our production, suggested that Lake Forest College do the same. He and Chloe Johnston, director of our production, wanted to create a presidential portrait gallery in Hixon and decided to invite the Lake Forest College community to join as artists.

Where will the portraits be displayed? How can others come view them?
The portraits will be hung in the lobby of Hixon Hall, where playgoers can view them before the show.

John F. Kennedy by Missy Sernatinger

I’m told you’re behind the whole operation – how has it been to be involved in managing this project?
My job has mainly been correspondence—emailing the artists to pick up and drop of their canvases and occasionally making deliveries—although I did work with Chloe on the initial plans and protocol. I love seeing how eager the community is to be involved with this project, and I’m looking forward to seeing these portraits!

I know you’re in the show too! How do you and the cast feel about being the production that officially kicks off the Festival?
The cast is so excited to kick off the Festival! Knowing that we are first in a national project is intimidating, but our energy and commitment for this show surpasses any nervousness. We love being part of a project that is bigger than ourselves.

Theodore Roosevelt by Elizabeth Hyzy

Tell me about your contribution.
I made a portrait of Teddy Roosevelt, which is special to me because I play Alice Roosevelt in the play. Although I aimed to make the portrait identifiable, I used bold, abstract colors to capture Teddy’s passion for life.

What happens to the gallery after the show closes?
That’s a good question. I would like to know the answer too!

Obama at the White House by Ariana Bayiates

Any thoughts you’d like to share with producers and casts to come?
This show is challenging yet fulfilling and exciting because each cast member has so many roles to explore. This show has something for any audience member—humor, tragedy, music, fun historical facts—and teaches the audience that we, the people of the United States, control our country’s destiny. I hope the audience walks away feeling empowered and ready to continue to advance humanity.

44 Plays for 44 Presidents at Lake Forest College runs April 5-7 and 12-14 at 7:30pm.

We’ve always said we wanted every kind of producer: big, medium, small, school, community…but we haven’t convinced a community theatre to join us. Until now!

We welcome Washington County Actors Community Theatre (WCACT) of Salem, IN, famous to us as the place where Jeff’s van broke down on his way to Actors Theatre of Louisville. But Salem, Indiana, is also famous for Morgan’s Raid, of 1863, when Confederate Cavalry took possession of the town for about six hours before they split with 500 bucks worth of loot.

And of course it’s also the home of WCACT, “a community-oriented organization dedicated to bringing the arts to life and committed to helping the arts grow in [their] community through education, inspiration and recreation.” Great stuff!

WCACT has chosen John Adams for their contribution to the video project. Is it because of John Adams High School in South Bend, Indiana? Was it because of 1912 Indiana Basketball Hall-of-Famer John Adams? Was it because there are 140 people from Indiana named John Adams listed in the White Pages? Nope.

Lincoln was taken, and he has a pretty great connection to the area. Rebounding from their disappointment, they did what any self-respecting theatre company would do–the picked a play they really liked that they knew they’d do well.

You go WCACT. We can’t wait to see it! And thanks for introducing your community to our play. If it survived Morgan’s Raid, Salem will certainly survive 44 Plays for 44 Presidents.

I asked Tyler Haberman, assistant director of Lake Forest’s 44 Plays for 44 Presidents to interview some of the cast and crew, and he went all out to make us a video that does just that!

These cats and kittens are setting the bar high for media with their own Tumblr page, and they open next week! Here’s wishing them a great kick off!

If you can’t wait to get your hands on more media from the festival be sure to check out our Tumblr page which will be adding more and more media very soon!

The Bard’s Town Theatre takes its name quite seriously…”Bard.”  Rather than being a Shakespearean theatre (as the name seems to suggest), The Bard’s Town Theatre actually looks to do what Shakespeare did in his day: focus on the creation of new work–and they do it well, according to The Arts Louisville, The Bard’s Town Theatre is “a force to be reckoned with.”

44 Plays for 44 Presidents came out of a theatre company with a similar mission, so we applaud their bias.

Their goal is to create world premiers as well as produce the works that haven’t been performed over and over again–and that’s 44 Plays for 44 Presidents…after this year, maybe 44 Plays will be disqualified by their standards but who knows? We’re having a good year, but we aint Tom Stoppard.

The Bard’s Town has chosen Zachary Taylor for the video project. Why, you ask?

Zachary Taylor is most famous for being one of the few presidents who died in office and his dead body is currently buried about six miles from The Bard’s Town Theatre in Zachary Taylor National Cemetery in Louisville, Kentucky.  That’s a really short commute for a ghost. I’m just saying.

We’re thrilled to have Louisville on board–it’s a town we love full of many people we know. And given the great reputation The Bard’s Town  Theatre has garnered, we’re extremely pleased to know they’ll produce 44 Plays for 44 Presidents.

Cyrano’s Theatre Company, Anchorage Alaska’s premier theatre company, has joined our ranks, mounting the first Festival production of 44 Plays for 44 Presidents outside the contiguous 48.

Regularly voted “Best Live Theater” in Anchorage, Cyrano’s does a lot more than produce great theatre: they work hard to nurture and endeavor to financially support local Alaskan talent. It’s this combination of quality work and outreach that’s won them a bazillion awards: like the Governor’s Arts Award and the Mayor’s Award for Outstanding Arts Organizations….Producing Artistic Director and co-founder, Sandy Harper has even received an Honorary Doctorate from University of Alaska and was awarded the Lorene Harrison Award For Lifetime Achievement In The Arts.

How will 44 Plays… be received in Alaska? Well…Anchorage Alaskans can see Wasilla from their back yards–just across Knik Arm –which means they know a lot about politics.  Right? They’ll love it.

Cyrano’s has chosen Andrew Johnson for our video project. Johnson was President of the United States when Secretary of State William H. Seward negotiated the purchase of Alaska from Russia in 1867–a transaction famously referred as “Seward’s Folly.” What’s interesting about that historical tidbit is that the purchase was generally popular at the time and Americans never went through a phase of popular buyer’s remorse. Quite the contrary, actually. We made a huge profit. Plus, it’s ALASKA! The phrase “Seward’s Folly” was coined by a clever political opposition that was angry about being called into a special session and generally hated Andrew Johnson, looking for any excuse to thwart him. Go figure.

As Lake Forest College steps up to the plate we asked Assistant Director Tyler Haberman to interview students about their experience thus far. This week we hear from Ayden Lopez, Class of 2015, who plays Woodrow Wilson, George W. Bush, and is a voiceover for Grant.

Tyler: How does it feel to be the first production in the festival?

Ayden: It is exciting to be the production to get the ball rolling. I am especially excited to premiere in the festival mash-up film in our George Bush Sr. play. Yet at the same time it is nerve-raking because of we are paired up with so many other productions and I am curious how they will do their own shows.

Tyler: What has been a highlight of rehearsal?

Ayden: Slowly seeing the individual plays come together to create a whole.

Tyler: What has been a frustration in rehearsal?

Ayden: Pushing tech and lights down to the last two weeks, it’s intense because we have yet to incorporate even lights into rehearsals.

Tyler: On a scale of 1-10 how would you rate your interest in politics before rehearsal?

Ayden: One.

Tyler: On a scale of 1-10 how would you rate your interest in politics AFTER rehearsal? And if it changed, what part of rehearsal most affected that?

Ayden: Probably a five. The epilogue of the play, the line “look at your hand, look at what you’ve done”.  I had never thought about each individual decision really affects the course of our history, that your vote could be the difference between two presidential elects.

Tyler: Is there any particular President’s play that you are bursting at the seems to tell an audience about? And why?

Ayden: Fillmore, I won’t give anything away, you will get a hoot out of watching three actors struggle to provide boring facts about Fillmore, in a funny way.

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Thanks Tyler and Ayden! We look forward to hearing more from the Lake Forest team!

City Lights Theater Company and Notre Dame High School–two producers that are basically across the street from each other in San Jose–are joining the Festival together.  Naturally, they’re collaborating on the video project and contributing  both Grover Cleveland plays. Perfect.

City Lights Theater Company is committed to presenting exhilarating, thought-provoking plays that speak strongly to their audiences. They also work with playwrights to develop new work. (Really! These companies are out there, I promise.) Also near and dear to their heart is their Youth and Education Program which offers ticket discounts, free study guides and opportunities for  many up-and-coming young actors, directors, designers, and technicians to develop their theatre skills alongside seasoned professionals.

That’s why City Lights  jumped on the opportunity to collaborate with Notre Dame High School.

Notre Dame High School is the oldest private secondary school for young women west of the Mississippi. An all female cast? Fantastic! And they’re no stranger to theatre, recently hosting the first annual TheatreWorks 24-Hour Play Festival, in which 65 students from 10 high schools gathered in the Notre Dame Chapel to create original, one-act plays in 24 hours.

As we’ve said, City Lights and Notre Dame have chosen to contribute both Grover Cleveland plays for the video project.

Grover Cleveland is most famous for being the only U.S. President to ever serve two, nonconsecutive terms. In fact, for this reason, we had an ongoing concern that our play should be titled 43 Plays for 42 Presidents when first wrote it.

Once we learned that Cleveland is referred to, officially, as our “22nd and 24th President of the United States,” we decided it was OK to stick with our 43-for-43 concept.

This collaboration is a very cool thing. In fact, I once wrote a blog post (a year ago!) about how I hoped something like this would happen.

We can’t wait to see the videos. And we welcome these twin productions with great enthusiasm. We’ll be sure to follow your collaboration with a matched interest.

I have many favorite moments within 44 Plays for 44 Presidents, but back when I was performing in the show, one of my favorites occurred during the first few seconds of Karen Weinberg’s Nixon piece (One Nixon, Underdog).

Rather than telling the audience what it already knew (or thought it knew) and feeding into the culturally (and one could argue historically) accepted position that Nixon was a terrible president who left the office in disgrace… she decided to write a rolicking musical number celebrating all of his accomplishments. It’s sheer brilliance – and incredibly fun to perform.

Chloe Johnston, another co-writer of the show, found this week a link that further explores a less emphasized and less discussed side of Nixon. This time as a romantic idealist who was madly in love with his wife. I highly recommend you check it out.

What’s so wonderful about the love letters that will be featured in an exhibit at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum is they provide for us a new context and perspective from which to view the man who held the office – which is, after all, the heart of what 44 Plays for 44 Presidents seeks to explore.

The human side of each president is what makes them so endlessly fascinating. Primarily because it reminds us that what separates us from them is somewhat illusory… the office, the hype, the pomp and circumstance.

In the end, it’s just a person. Doing a job. A very big, very prominent, very public job. But on a day-to-day level, it’s a job that he (and hopefully one day, she) is working as hard as possible to do well.

And, ultimatey, we all make mistakes. Unfortunately for the Presidents, those mistakes are made in a very wide and inescapable forum.

But maybe in reading those letters and hearing a private voice that was so different from his public persona, it’s possible to connect with Nixon on a simple and human level. There is something innocent and trusting and courageous in the messages he poured out to his wife – and those are three words I would not have necessarily ascribed to him until today.

I’ve known a few people in my life who have met a President. And what do they say? “He was so nice. He shook my hand and let me tell him about….” Because what do we want from our Presidents? Beyond the politics, like any celebrity we want to identify with them somehow.

Warren G. Harding's PJ's. Which somehow tells me all I need to know about WGH.

I’ve never met a President, but I did meet David Sedaris — stay with me here. As he signed my book for my friend Julie he asked, “now who’s Julie?” There was my moment: an invitation to become a raconteur to my favorite raconteur. I unloaded on him about our shared appreciation of his writing, as well as an outlandish story (I’ll save you the gory details). He laughed, finished signing my wife’s book, and as we traipsed away he said, “I love stories like that.” David Sedaris was suddenly much more real to me than a the words on a page or a voice on the radio.

44 Plays for 44 Presidents allows us to identify with our Presidents by contextualizing their decisions, their tensions, and their personal life. We are allowed to humanize legendary figures like Lincoln and sympathize with Presidents we never knew much about — like Pierce.

Don’t get me wrong, I do not mean to trivialize the Presidency to merely celebrity — and seeing a President portrayed is much different than meeting one in person, but dare I say it, one of the greatest strengths of 44 Plays for 44 Presidents is that it levels the playing field of history so that we can connect to these Presidents on the same plateau. That is why it is so exciting that currently 31 productions of this play are in the works across the country. Between production, performance, and audiences I hope we can all meet on the same plateau, and see some of the President in ourselves — or vice versa!

Happy Campaigning!