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Precious Memories: Return to Knollwood

2010 · Lincoln Land Theatre

Precious Memories: Return to Knollwood is a work of documentary theatre drawn entirely from life. Over the spring of 2010, a company of young actors from the Lincoln Land Theatre visited the Knollwood retirement community in Jacksonville, Illinois, sat down in pairs with its residents, and recorded their stories. The interviews — transcribed nearly word for word and gathered into a working journal — became the raw material for the show. What the residents offered was a century of ordinary American life: the Great Depression, work in the old Jacksonville factories, the war years, marriages that lasted six decades, and the quiet business of growing old with grace.

The residents speak for themselves throughout. Ada Hipkins tells of leaving her work as a "flower lady" to take up watercolor painting; Bud recounts driving Coca-Cola trucks at thirty-five miles an hour, hiking six miles through twenty-below weather in the Navy, and building his family's first house by hand after a full day's work; Cecilia Bradshaw remembers growing up "poor in money but rich in love." Again and again the young interviewers came away changed. As one wrote on the project blog, "Many people today think they need the newest computer or phone to be happy, whereas the residents of Knollwood are just happy to have someone to talk to."

The result is less a play with a plot than a chorus of remembered voices — a portrait of a place and a generation, assembled with tenderness and respect by the teenagers who listened.

Songs

• Don't Wait — an original song urging its listeners not to leave love unspoken: "Don't wait to tell someone you love 'em / Don't wait till your time has slipped away."
• Heaven Song ("Welcome Home") — based on a poem by Katherine M. Lawrence, a resident of Knollwood, set to music for the ensemble.

Cast

The Lincoln Land Theatre youth ensemble, who conducted the interviews and performed the residents' words:

• Ensemble — Dalton
• Ensemble — Logan
• Ensemble — Brennan
• Ensemble — Erin
• Ensemble — Kyle
• Ensemble — Wes
• Ensemble — Annie
• Ensemble — Luke
• Ensemble — Katie
• Ensemble — Brock
• Ensemble — Hannah

Production Notes

The piece was developed through the Lincoln Land Theatre in the spring of 2010, with the actors documenting their progress week by week on the company blog (lincolnlandtheatre.blogspot.com). Each young performer was paired with one or more residents of Knollwood for the interviews. Among the many residents whose words and memories shaped the show were Ada Hipkins, Bud, Cecilia Bradshaw, Edith Jacques, Elbert Dawdy, Elmer, Estelle Anderson, Esther Meyer, Fern Young, Gloria Jean Hand, Harold Ray, Helen Hess, Helen Little, and Katherine M. Lawrence, whose poem became the basis for the show's closing song.