Every play has to begin somewhere—with an experience, an assignment, a situation, an inspiration—and these plays about the founding of America are no exception. The journey for this series of plays began in 1987 at Knott’s Berry Farm in Buena Park, California. At that time, I was the manager of the Bird Cage Theatre in Ghost Town. We were a group of actors and musicians who performed 19th century melodramas and various seasonal plays throughout the year.
Beverly Lamping was the Director of Education and Culture at the farm. She had an idea to present a play in Knott’s replica of Independence Hall to celebrate the Bicentennial of the U.S. Constitution. If the play was well received during the celebration in September, it could become a part of Knott’s Berry Farm’s Adventures in Education program that Beverly was also developing.
It sounded like a good idea. There was, however, no script for the project, and since I did not know the story of the Constitution, I told Beverly that I needed to do some research before any decisions could be made.
And so the journey began.
I’ve experienced a curious phenomenon that sometimes occurs during the process of a new project. As soon as action is taken, unforeseen and unpredictable circumstances appear to indicate there is life in the idea. This phenomenon does not occur via contemplation. Action must be taken. Begin the search. Ask the questions. Find the authority. Read the books.
My question was, “What is the story of the United States Constitution?” Strange as it might seem, in two days, I was bequeathed with four answers that directed me throughout the production of A Rising Sun, which was the first of the series of plays to be produced.
Answer number one came from a coworker who was a history buff (which I did not know). Second, she recommended The Great Rehearsal by Carl Van Doren, and referred me to a librarian at the Buena Park Library whose passion was the American Revolution. Third, the librarian recommended 1787 The Grand Convention, The Year That Made a Nation by Clinton Rossiter, Miracle of Philadelphia by Catherine Drinker Bowen, and fourth, to the Dictionary of American Biography edited by Dumas Malone. Four answers in 48 hours. See what I mean? There was definitely life in Beverly’s idea.
Clinton Rossiter was a Political Science and History professor at Cornel University. His book, 1787 The Grand Convention (1966) was invaluable to my research. I became fascinated by the insights he shared. For example, he wrote that the nature of man makes a free government possible, but far from inevitable. And that even the most stable and benevolent of governments must be kept under surveillance, since the corrupting effects of political power can be controlled but never banished.
From May 25 to September 17, 1787, a convention of fifty-five men met in Philadelphia to resolve the issues brought about by a government without a strong central authority. The United States Government, under the Articles of Confederation, was in a dire state of emergency. In Madison’s lines from A Rising Sun, adapted from the journal he kept of the Constitutional Convention, he declares, “The states were divided; small state against large state. Thirteen separate ‘sovereign nations’ badgering, bartering, and backbiting to attain supremacy.” Two hundred years later, we tend to believe the “founding fathers” always had a unified vision. But this was far from true. They had to wring their agreement from their battles and wrestle their fears and differing perspectives to the ground.
From 1787 The Grand Convention (1966) Rossiter writes, “ The myriad of diversified decisions that were made so painfully and prudently during those sixteen and one-half weeks, were the kind of decisions that force men to be intelligent as well as brave, imaginative as well as tough, and creative as well as dutiful.”
The education I had received in history from my school days was made up of a chronological series of events that were to be memorized by the date they occurred. The historical results appeared to be logical and predictable. Nothing was mentioned that described the chaos and danger of the times. Nothing was mentioned that described the emotional and gut-wrenching decisions that had to be made. As a result, my impressions of the Founding Fathers were distorted, and I discovered the outcomes of the events were completely unknown and totally unpredictable at the time they occurred. My revelation was confirmed, much later, by one of our most celebrated historians. In a speech entitled, Knowing Who We Are, (2017) at Hillsdale College, David McCullough said:
“The task of teaching and writing history is infinitely complex and infinitely seductive and rewarding. And it seems to me that one of the truths about history that needs to be made clear to a student or to a reader is that nothing ever had to happen the way it happened. History could have gone off in any number of different directions in any number of different ways at almost any point, just as your own life can. You never know. One thing leads to another. Nothing happens in a vacuum. Actions have consequences. These observations all sound self-evident. But they’re not – particularly to a young person trying to understand life.”
And just as we don’t know how things are going to turn out for us, those who went before us didn’t either.
During the research of the Constitutional Convention, I came to a realization that became the cornerstone of these plays of the American Revolution. In short, I realized that our Founding Fathers were human beings taking a very dangerous journey. That realization gave a greater appreciation of the courage that was required and the brilliance of their accomplishments. They were absolutely unique but very human beings.
And the journey continued.
Playwright, author and director Tim Mills will be sharing blogs about his series of plays about the founding of America. He welcomes your comments!
References
McCullough, D. (2017). The American Spirit. Who We Are and What We Stand For. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster.
Rossiter, C. (1966). 1787 The Grand Convention, The Year That Made A Nation. New York, NY: The Macmillan Company.