Abraham!
1998 · Lincoln's New Salem Historic Site, near Petersburg, Illinois
Abraham! is a musical play in two acts by Ken Bradbury and Robert L. Crowe, telling the story of Abraham Lincoln's formative years in New Salem, Illinois, from roughly 1831 to 1836. The play opens with young Lincoln traveling down the Sangamon River by flatboat — loaded with pork barrels and hogs and bound for New Orleans — when the boat hangs up on the milldam at New Salem. There Lincoln and his companions meet the townspeople at Rutledge's Mill, and the rough little frontier village becomes the place where the future president comes of age.
Researched for historical accuracy and then submitted to a panel of Lincoln scholars for comment and correction, the show compresses years, events, and characters into a two-hour evening of frontier humor, music, and heart. As the playwrights noted in the program: "Our purpose is to entertain... If this play serves as inspiration, we recommend that you read the historical literature about Lincoln at New Salem and his subsequent life." Over two seasons it played for thousands of audience members at Lincoln's New Salem Historic Site near Petersburg, returning again in the summer of 1998.
The production was created for an unusually demanding venue — a 600-seat, multi-leveled outdoor amphitheater that could move "on a moment's notice" to a rain-free, 200-seat indoor stage — a logistical challenge the playwrights credited to the welcome contribution of the tech crews. Abraham drew on the deep collaboration between Bradbury and Crowe, who by this point had written eight plays together (four of them musicals) despite, as they liked to note, never having sat in a room and written a single word together.
Musical Numbers
Act I
- Roll Up the Sangamon — Greg, Luke and Scott
- The Freedom Wind — Scott
- Good To Be Free — Cast
- Lonely River — Kristin and Scott
- The Sangamon Volunteers — Cast
- The Freedom Wind (reprise) — Scott
Act II
- Mud Blues — Bob
- Mother's Lament — Phyllis and Greg
- You Gotta Dig Deeper — Greg and Luke
- Temperance Rally Rag — Marian and Cast
- That's the Way To Get Ahead — Cast
- The Freedom Wind (reprise) — Scott and Cast
Cast
- Abraham Lincoln — Scott Stanberry
- Man on raft, Bowling Green, Ferguson, etc. — Greg Floyd
- Denton Offutt, Jack Kelso, Jack Armstrong, etc. — Bob Large
- Mrs. Warburton, Temperance lady, etc. — Marian Levin
- Woman on platform, mother, etc. — Phyllis Pruitt
- Man on raft, Mentor Graham, etc. — Luke Crawford
- Ann Rutledge, woman on platform, etc. — Kristin Van Aken
Production Notes
- Writers: Ken Bradbury and Robert L. Crowe
- Director: Ken Bradbury
- Executive Producer: Robert L. Crowe
- Stage Manager: Catherine Folks
- Technical Director / Sound: Chuck West, Steve Eisenhauer
- Original cast recording: Rainey Day Studios
- Setting: New Salem, Illinois, 1831–1836
- Publisher: The Consortium Publishing Company, a division of Creative Ideas, Inc. (© 1997)
Abraham! was a collaborative effort in the keenest sense. After Bradbury and Crowe poured over the vast volume of Lincoln research, the script was reviewed by a panel of Lincoln scholars, and over its two seasons at New Salem dozens of Lincoln experts added their own input. The script and production materials in the archive span several seasons (1997–2001), reflecting a show that was revised and remounted across multiple summers.
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