|
A
one-man
performance suitable for any audience, LINCOLN FOR THE AGES provides a
look into the real life of our 16th President, and a chance for
audiences to share the experience directly. Phillip Chetwynd, in the
role of Abraham Lincoln, brings to life the essential character of this
man, allowing you to suspend disbelief long enough to visit with one of
our most remarkable presidents, and to come away from the experience
thinking you have truly met the Great Emancipator himself.
ABRAHAM
LINCOLN
An unknown frontier lawyer when nominated
by the new Republican Party in 1860, Abraham Lincoln was considered by
many of his time to be a country bumpkin given to story-telling. Because
of a two-way split in the Democratic Party, Lincoln won the Presidency
as the first Republican to gain that office.
Thought by many
today as a humorist, he told stories not only to relieve tension, but
also to carry a message of his philosophy and beliefs. He proved himself
to his administration and to his nation as a shrewd and determined
politician, and as an able and innovative commander-in-chief during the
ultimate national crisis - The American Civil War.
His ability to
express difficult concepts in simple yet profound language reached the
common man. As a result, even life-long rivals and political opponents
like Stephen Douglas could not help but like and admire him. He
maintained the Union. His influence even reached the defeated
Southerners, many of whom soon realized, at his untimely death, that
they had lost perhaps their best friend.
Now, meet the
President today, as he was in the 1860s, and witness for yourself the
dignity and integrity brought to the Presidency by one of the greatest
men America has ever produced: ABRAHAM LINCOLN!
THE MAN WHO WOULD BE LINCOLN
Phillip A. Chetwynd has been a devoted
scholar of Lincoln since grade school, dedicated to studying the
character, philosophy, and common sense of this simple country lawyer
who became the definitive leader of our nation. He began his road to
this portrayal in 1976, reenacting during the American Bicentennial. By
the late 1980s, Chetwynd transferred his interests to the American Civil
War, finding a long-sought outlet for his first passion: Abraham
Lincoln. The only professional Lincoln presenter to enter the field of
Lincoln impressions directly from reenacting, Chetwynd portrayed the
President for the first time in 1988, and hasn't stopped since.
He brings to his
presentation a strong, convincing sense of Lincoln in the first person.
His strength and challenge are in the press conference, where he fields
questions from every quarter on any aspect of Lincoln: his White House
administration during the Civil War, foreign policy, reconstruction, the
place of the Negro in American society, his law practice, family life,
and growing up on the nation's frontier. Hard-nosed historians cannot
shake him from his first-person portrayal, supported by his wealth of
knowledge of Lincoln as a whimsical and devoted family man, as a shrewd
and determined politician, as a private and troubled individual burdened
by personal loss and national tragedy.
|