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A Road Trip Through Time

2016 · Three historic sites in Jacksonville, IL: the Governor Duncan Mansion, the David A. Smith House, and the Main Hall of the Illinois School for the Deaf

Traveling theatre is a concept as old as the first Greek actors, but with A Road Trip Through Time Ken Bradbury and his Lincoln Land Community College Traveling Theatre class gave the idea a new spin: they transported the audience. On the evenings of May 16 and 17, 2016, ticket holders met at Jacksonville's First Presbyterian Church and boarded buses bound for three of the city's most historic locations, where a different original play awaited them at each stop. "We'll be bringing history to life in the very places where that history occurred," Bradbury said. "There's no need for scenery. The audience will be sitting on it."

The three sites were bound together by Jacksonville's nineteenth-century history. The Children of Silence, staged in the Main Hall of the Illinois School for the Deaf, dramatized the early, politically turbulent years of one of Illinois's oldest educational institutions and the deaf students and teachers — among them Matron Mary Emma Rose Mitchell Totten — who lived its story. Copperheads & Chamber Pots, at the David A. Smith House on the Illinois College grounds, told of the prominent abolitionist lawyer David A. Smith, who freed the slaves he inherited and brought their families north to Illinois, shared sixty-eight law cases with Abraham Lincoln, and helped found Westminster Presbyterian Church over the question of slavery. The Stolen Diary, performed at the Governor Duncan Mansion, drew much of its dialogue directly from the actual diary of Mrs. Mary Louisa Duncan, wife of Joseph Duncan, governor of Illinois from 1834 to 1838 — a tender, often funny, often sorrowful record of frontier life, faith, and family loss.

The cast played real figures from history, and the connective tissue ran deep: Joseph Duncan, David A. Smith, and Colonel James Dunlap all touched the early board of the School for the Deaf, and Lincoln himself was a visitor to both the Duncan and Smith homes. All proceeds from the performances were donated to the Daughters of the American Revolution in support of their continuing care of the Governor Duncan Mansion.

Cast

The Children of Silence — Illinois School for the Deaf, Main Hall

• Mary Emma Rose Mitchell Totten — Sylvia Burke & Sherry Humphries
• Lynn Wellington — Emily Burns & Daniella Bernal
• Charles Laughlin — Kyler Miller & Michael Lapa
• Mary Waldo — Courtney Privia & Chatjuan Rice
• Paul Forbes — Ben Stanberry & Felix Guerrero

Copperheads & Chamber Pots — The David A. Smith House

• Ann Mary Smith — Mackenzie Musch
• Imogene Dunlap — Ally Bunfill
• Thomas Smith — Jamie Schnepper
• Laura Smith — Rachel Skillet
• Sarah Smith — Kira Sayre
• Catherine Smith — Kamryn Portwood
• Eliza Smith — Katia Janes
• David A. Smith — Mathew Thurman

The Stolen Diary — The Governor Duncan Mansion

• Mary Louisa Duncan — Elly Crawford
• Joseph Duncan — Brenan Pool
• Julia Duncan — Bailey Littleton
• Hannah Duncan — Hannah Werries
• Ann Elizabeth Duncan — Abby Link
• Martin Hussy — Marcus Blair

Production Notes

• Written and Directed by Ken Bradbury
• Presented by the Lincoln Land Community College Traveling Theatre, a dual-credit class, with a cast drawn from Beardstown, Triopia, and Jacksonville, joined for this production by theatre students from the Illinois School for the Deaf
• Dates: May 16 & 17, 2016, 7 p.m.; audiences gathered at First Presbyterian Church and traveled by bus between the three sites
• Costuming: Janet Long & Jeri Ryan
• Production Coordinator: Maryjane Million
• Interpreters: Megan Luckey (Smith House), Sabrina Bailey (Duncan Mansion), Michelle Brown (I.S.D.)
• Musicians: Luke Crawford, Chuck West, Jerry Kirbach, Caleb Holloway, Ken Bradbury, Taylor Irvin & Jacob Estabrook, playing old-fashioned tunes at each venue
• Proceeds were donated to the D.A.R. in support of the Governor Duncan Mansion

Research drew on Dr. Mickey Jones's collection on the Illinois School for the Deaf, Edmond Booth, Deaf Pioneer by Harry G. Lang, Doris Hopper's David A. Smith, Abolitionist, Patron of Learning, Prairie Lawyer, the Illinois College Library, and the actual diary of Mrs. Duncan.