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The Skinner Story

2007 · Village Park / Skinner Bandstand, Meredosia, Illinois

The Skinner Story is Ken Bradbury's tribute to one of Meredosia, Illinois' most remarkable families, written and directed for the September 2007 dedication of the Skinner family mural during the village's "Dosh Day" celebration. Built in the readers'-theatre style Ken favored for historical pieces — actors on stools weaving together first-person accounts rather than a costumed pageant — the show told the story of the Skinners through the voices of the people who knew them.

At the heart of the story is Chester Skinner (1873–1958), an inventive, industrious man who built Meredosia's first electric light plant in 1897, setting the poles and stringing the wires himself, and charging customers a dollar a month for two hours of light each night. Chester operated the town's Princess Theater, played cornet in the first Meredosia band, and — having no music teacher nearby — taught all five of his children to play instruments. Music became the lifelong endeavor of every one of them: Frank on piano, Carl on drums, Russell on saxophone and clarinet, Al on banjo and drums, and Bernice at the keyboard and organ.

The script gives special place to Bernice Skinner Edlin (1901–2000), the beloved schoolteacher and church organist who anchored the family in Meredosia, and to Frank Skinner (1897–1968), "Meredosia's most famous son." Frank left the village after World War I, studied at the Chicago Conservatory, and went on to Hollywood, where he scored more than 500 films at Universal Studios — among them The Great Ziegfeld, The Wolf Man, Harvey, the Sherlock Holmes pictures, and the Abbott & Costello comedies — earning five Academy Award nominations. Through it all, Frank kept a tender devotion to the bandstand in Meredosia's Village Park where he first played, quietly seeing to its upkeep for the rest of his life.

Cast

Production Notes

Written and directed by Ken Bradbury for the Meredosia Historical Society, The Skinner Story was performed in Meredosia's Village Park on Monday, September 3, 2007, as part of "Dosh Day," the village's three-day late-summer festival. The evening paired Ken's "Skinner Memories" presentation with the formal dedication of the Skinner mural, a community project funded by the Skinner Estate and dozens of local donors.

The piece grew out of a 2006 invitation from organizer Dora Dawson. Ken, by his own account booked solid with writing, concerts, and directing, agreed on the condition that it follow the spare readers'-theatre model he had used for the "Knollwood Tales" — actors reading collected first-person history rather than mounting a large costumed pageant. Much of the show's text is drawn from letters, diaries, and personal recollections gathered from people who had known the Skinners.

For the dedication, Ken also delivered a speech reflecting on small-town America — arguing that it was precisely Meredosia's remoteness and lack of conveniences that fostered the Skinner family's creativity and work ethic. "What we dedicate today," he told the crowd, "is not only a mural to the Skinner family, but a testament to the creativity, the integrity, the absolute joy of growing up in small town America."