Looking to relive the excitement of President Abraham Lincoln’s assassination? Too damn bad!
The overlords at Ford’s Theater in Washington D.C., where John Wilkes Booth famously shot and killed Honest Abe on April 14, 1865 during a performance of Our American Cousin, recently headed to TikTok to sound off on one of their most frequently asked questions: No, they will not be putting on an encore performance of Tom Taylor’s 1858 farce.
@fordstheatredc Replying to @danimore1920 Does Ford’s Theatre perform “Our American Cousin?” Here’s the answer to one of our most-asked questions. #FordsTheatre #FordsTheater #Museum #NPS #Lincoln #AbrahamLincoln #History #historytok ♬ original sound - fordstheatre
“While we at Ford’s explore and interpret the moment of Lincoln’s assassination, we don’t reenact it,” explained a rep for the Washington D.C. playhouse, which has been holding performances since its re-opening in the late 1960s.
Beyond Americans’ pained relationship with gun violence and Our American Cousin’s satirical humor largely failing the test of time — let’s face it, most audiences in 2023 probably wouldn’t find “a vile caricature of an inane nobleman” to be “the funniest thing in the world,” as one bygone British magazine wrote in its review of the play — the rep explained that the theater and the National Park Service ultimately decided the play is no longer “appropriate to the space.”
A big part of this decision, he said, stemmed from questions surrounding if — and how — the theater, the players and the production should acknowledge the fateful events that occurred at the end of the second scene in Act II. “What would happen at that moment?” he asked. “We don’t want to reenact a traumatizing event, but we also don’t feel comfortable ignoring it, so this makes things a little difficult creatively.”
Moreover, what — if anything — would come after that point in the play, the rep added, also posing a unique set of questions. “Should the play come to a halt as it did on April 14, 1865?” he asked. “Should it continue? Neither is a good option.”
At least there’s always Killing Lincoln?
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