Jacksonville...Works
2012 · Lincoln Land Community College
"Jacksonville...Works" was an original readers-theatre piece devised by Ken Bradbury's Lincoln Land Community College theatre class in the spring of 2012. For several weeks the students interviewed a wide variety of Jacksonville residents about their chosen careers — and the other jobs they had held along the way — and Ken shaped those conversations into a script for a readers group who performed using only stools as props. The result was less a plot than a portrait of a town's working life: a radio announcer, a doctor who delivered 4,500 babies, an 88-year-old missionary, a tow-truck driver, a diver who recovers lost wallets from the lake, a homeless mother helped by local pastors, and many more, each telling a "really neat moment" from their work.
The show was presented free of charge as a benefit, with the offering plate passed to support the Salvation Army and the Western Illinois Youth Camp. It ran at three Jacksonville churches over a March weekend, the sanctuaries chosen in part because so many of the people interviewed were members of those congregations.
Performances
- March 18 — Grace Methodist, Jacksonville, 7 p.m.
- March 19 — First Presbyterian, Jacksonville, 7 p.m.
- March 20 — Faith Lutheran, Jacksonville, 2 p.m.
Production Notes
The piece grew directly out of the students' fieldwork: weeks of interviews with Jacksonville workers, transcribed and woven into a script meant to capture the common themes across many lives rather than any single story. Ken's source notes group the interviews by theme — "Come with me, I'll help you see," "Thanks for taking me as I am," "I'll never quit" — and ask two students, John and Ryan, to write songs general enough to cover several of the interviews at once. Among the Jacksonville residents drawn from were Dr. Bone, former Congressman Paul Findley, and Bob Chipman, with many others contributing their stories. Donations from all three performances went to the Salvation Army and the Western Illinois Youth Camp.