Before there was “Hamilton,” there was “1776.”
“Lin-Manuel said without ‘1776,’ there was no ‘Hamilton,’ and so there really are wonderful parallels between the two of them,” observed Siri Howard, who plays Abigail Adams in the Gulf Coast Symphony production. “I don't think you can ever get tired of learning about the history of America because what we read about and learn about in the classroom is only just a fraction of what the true story of America really is, and, of course, we're living it out today.”
Howard made her Broadway debut in “The Sound of Music” at the age of 15. She went on to star in tours of “Parade,” “Phantom of the Opera” and “Les Miserables.” But playing Abigail Adams has been a bucket list role since she was just a kid — not just because Abilgail Adams was such a such a strong, independent woman, but because of the show’s historical significance.
Jason Parrish stars as John Adams in the musical. He couldn’t agree more.
“She became a voice of reason for him,” Parrish observed. “She became a sounding board for him. She became someone to sort of poke his ego and make him see that you need to compromise … She was his conscience, kind of, throughout this entire process, and through his eventual presidency.”
Abigail Adams conveyed that strength and moderating influence through a series of letters the couple exchanged during the 14 months it took the Second Continental Congress to negotiate, debate and adopt the Declaration of Independence.
“He wrote sometimes three times a day to Abigail,” said Director Jeremy Webb. “She was his best friend. She also pushed him to stay strong…. They had a tremendous love and a need to be together and be with each other. So, in a sense, Abigail's the motivating force behind what's going on … urging him to get this thing done, get the vote for independence done.”
“This play is really about teaching us a lesson in how to compromise with one another, how to work with one another, how to look past our political differences and understand that we're all people, that we're all motivated by the same things,” Parrish added. “We might have different ways of getting there, but really this is about compromise. And what the Founding Fathers left for us, not just in this document, but eventually the Constitution, is they built a system that requires working together in order to get things done, in order to govern.”
“The dramatization of this show is really palpable,” Howard interjected. “You hear it through George Washington's missives that are read onstage. You see it through the conflict [among the delegates to the Second Continental Congress]. You see firsthand just how close we came to not gaining our independence. That is really true…. There was so much at stake, and we didn't know if we would make it. And I am so inspired by being able to be a part of this, and thinking about what could be next for the next 250 years. What is in store for our future, and how can we make this country even more wonderful, and how can we make ourselves even stronger?”
Director Jeremy Webb reminds us that there is another aspect of this production that makes it must-see theater.
“What's specifically great about this event that we're doing is that it's a symphonic experience,” Webb noted. “So we have, I think, a 40-piece orchestra onstage the entire evening with maestro Andrew Kurtz. And in front of that, we have the events unfolding in front of you, in front of your eyes. So the stage is full. I mean, at certain points, I think we'll have 70 artists onstage at the same time.”
Retelling the story of our quest for independence through musical theater also fits uniquely within the context of America250.
“There's no art form more American than musical theater,” said Webb. “We invented it … So, ‘1776’ is an American show in an American idiom, original to us, about, you know, maybe the most important moment in American history.”
Gulf Coast Symphony is commemorating this milestone with a performance of the musical, “1776,” at the Barbara B. Mann Performing Arts Hall on April 18 and 19.
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About the musical
“1776” is a spirited musical retelling of the events leading up to the signing of the Declaration of Independence. With wit, drama, and memorable songs, the musical follows John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, and Thomas Jefferson as they battle political opposition and personal doubts.
The passionate but stubborn John Adams pushes the Second Continental Congress toward independence while clashing with fellow delegates, rallying them with songs like “Sit Down, John” and “But, Mr. Adams.” As tensions rise and the cost of freedom becomes clear, the story unfolds through powerful moments such as “He Plays the Violin,” the haunting “Molasses to Rum,” and the poignant “Momma Look Sharp,” before the delegates finally unite to sign the Declaration of Independence.
“It is historical. It's somewhat hysterical, humorous and funny,” said Andrew Kurtz, founder and music director and maestro of Gulf Coast Symphony. “It's the meeting of the [Second] Continental Congress and the drafting and approval of the Declaration of Independence. And so, I think the timing is perfect.”
“It's a huge cast of men because the Continental Congress were all men,” Kurtz continued. “There are two women in the whole show, Abigail Adams and Martha Jefferson. Martha Jefferson is onstage for 12 minutes in one scene and Abigail Adams, I think, has three scenes for about 15 minutes. So I'm excited to do this musical. It's kind of been on my list for a very long time.”
In addition to Parrish and Howard, the cast features Raymond McLeod as Benjamin Franklin, A.J. Mendini as Thomas Jefferson, John McKerrow as John Hancock and Kimberly Suskind as Martha Jefferson. Suskind also served as the show’s choreographer.
“1776” was created by Sherman Edwards, who wrote the music and lyrics, with a book by Peter Stone.
The show premiered on Broadway in 1969 where it received great acclaim and won three Tony Awards, including Best Musical. It was also nominated for five Drama Desk Awards.
The original production starred William Daniels as Adams, Ken Howard as Thomas Jefferson, and Howard Da Silva as Benjamin Franklin. All three revisited their roles in the 1972 movie version of this acclaimed show.
America250 is a nonpartisan initiative to engage every American in commemorating the signing of the Declaration of Independence and the 250th anniversary of our country.
About Siri Howard
This is Howard’s fifth performance for Gulf Coast Symphony. She was previously seen at GCS as Marian in “The Music Man,” Amalia in “She Loves Me,” Nellie in “South Pacific,” and Laurey in “Oklahoma!” Her other stage credits include “Sweeney Todd: Live from Lincoln Center” starring Emma Thompson, Cinderella in “Into the Woods,” Mother in “Ragtime,” Portia in “Something Rotten,” Judy in “White Christmas” and Hodel in “Fiddler on the Roof.”
She has been a concert soloist for the Nashville Symphony, Detroit Symphony, Omaha Symphony, Florida Orchestra, Wheeling Symphony and the Steamboat Symphony.
Howard grew up in a musical family. Her mother was a high school choral director, church organist and choir director. Her father was a musician.
“So, music was always a part of my life growing up,” said Howard. “My parents loved exposing us to music. We would go to concerts all the time, and we would watch musicals as kids. So, they would put ‘1776’ on and we watched it as a family. So, I know almost all the songs, and I have probably performed most of them in some capacity in my living room.”
Howard is drawn to strong female characters such as Abigail Adams “now that I’m not playing ingenue roles anymore.”
“She was a very strong woman, a bit of a feminist, I think,” Howard speculated. “She famously said, don't forget the women, John, when they were writing the declaration.”
In the musical, their relationship emerges from a series of letters they exchanged while he was marooned in Philadelphia during the Second Continental Congress.
“That is really how you see their relationship in the show,” Howard noted. “They appear onstage together, but through the context of their letter writing, which is really a beautiful way to experience their relationship, and if they haven't seen their letters or read them, I really encourage your audience to look up some of their letters in the McCullough book on John Adams, which really goes in-depth into their relationship. Their relationship was quite romantic and quite beautiful, and she really kept him even-keeled, I think. And so I quite love her. She's wonderful.”
Howard is thrilled to be part of the production especially because it is being performed in observance of the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.
“I feel like it's so important to tell this story at this time in our history,” Howard said. “No matter what your background is or what you believe in, hearing these words and knowing what our country was founded on, I think you can take away so much and find so much inspiration. And so I’m thrilled to be a part of this, and thinking about what could the next 250 years might hold, what is in store for our future, and how we can make this country even more wonderful and ourselves even stronger.”
But Howard is also cognizant that “1776” is a show and, therefore, entertainment. On that score, the show is also a resounding success.
“There is so much humor in this,” Howard touted. “There is romance in this. There is drama. There is excitement. It is wonderful. There is something for everybody in this story, believe it or not. And it is not stale. It is fresh. It is exciting. It is new. And I cannot wait to tell this story.”
Howard resides in Greenville, South Carolina, with her husband, director/producer Max Quinlan, and their children, Jack and Sofie.
About Jason Parrish
Jason Parrish is an actor, director, and theatre maker now in his 21st year with Florida Repertory Theatre as an ensemble artist and the company’s associate artistic director. As an actor, his more than 30 appearances with Florida Rep include “A Sherlock Carol,” “Driving Miss Daisy,” “Cabaret,” “How the Other Half Loves,” “Over the River and Through the Woods,” “The Dingdong,” and “The Santaland Diaries," by David Sedaris.
His recent directing credits with Florida Rep include “Little Shop of Horrors,” “Always…Patsy Cline,” “Shout! The Mod Musical,” “Lucky Stiff,” “Hank Williams: Lost Highway,” “The Legend of Georgia McBride,” “Ring of Fire,” “Let’s Fall in Love” (also co-creator), and the National New Play Network's rolling world premiere of “Alabaster.”
Parrish’s work as an actor and director includes many theatres such as Orlando Shakespeare Theatre, Artis—Naples & the Naples Philharmonic, and the New York Philharmonic’s Young People’s Concert Series. But when he learned that Gulf Coast Symphony was about to produce “1776,” he quickly reached out to Artistic Director Andrew Kurtz to see if he could audition for a role in the musical.
Playing John Adams did not just give Parrish the chance to appear at the Barbara B. Mann Performing Arts Hall with a cast of accomplished actors, it afforded him the opportunity to work with Siri Howard to portray Abigail and John Adams' special relationship.
“You get a sense right at the beginning of the play that their love, that their relationship, that their mutual respect is one of the things that made him move forward and get through the difficulties he was encountering,” said Parrish.
Those difficulties included the strong personalities and contrary beliefs held by the delegates to the Second Continental Congress.
“There are factions of people who don't want to vote for independence,” Parrish pointed out. “They do not want to break away from Great Britain. And then there are those from New England, primarily, who are the ones bearing the brunt of the king's tyranny, who are the loudest voices for independence. If you think about it, in 1776 Boston and Philadelphia are different countries, essentially. They're colonies of Great Britain, but they were populated by people with way different backgrounds and interests. And then, of course, the South, which was still practicing slavery. They had to come together in this room to find a way forward.”
To complicate matters, those in the middle and southern colonies found Adams to be a loud, strident, abrasive voice.
“They didn't want him to be their voice,” Parrish noted. “And so, Adams had to learn a bit of diplomacy. John Adams was a terrible diplomat. He was not a negotiator. That's one of the lessons he has to learn in this play, and Ben Franklin is the one who teaches him that lesson and says you can't have it all right now. We have to do this in steps, in order. And that's what this musical captures beautifully.”
The musical also evidences the important role that Abigail Adams had in helping her husband learn the art of compromise.
“To be honest, she was arguably one of the most important voices at the time for the cause of independence,” said Parrish. “Many of the women of that time were. It wasn't just the men. If you watch the Ken Burns documentary on the Revolutionary War, it goes into all of this. It gives voice to some of the women who were behind some of these more famous men, and Abigail Adams is one of the most well-known of those voices. She definitely had her own opinions as to how John needed to make this happen. And even into his vice presidency and presidency, she was an active companion of his.”
As much as he appreciates the historical lessons the play teaches, Parrish enjoys the musical’s ability to humanize our Founding Fathers.
“This is a traditional musical. It's got a big chorus of largely male voices. It's funny. It's irreverent at times. It's incredibly uplifting. It'll make you think. It'll make you sit back and think about the people who are behind these demigods that we make Adams and Washington and Jefferson and Ben Franklin out to be. We make them seem like they were somehow superhuman. But, in fact, they were just men. They were people, just like you and me, having to hash this stuff out and we've given them sort of this elevated status. But the musical really allows you to look at all of the behind-the-scenes work that had to happen in order to make this document possible and all those signatures possible. They had to get 13 colonies to vote unanimously in order to say hey, we're gonna take this experiment through for democracy.”
About Jeremy Webb
Jeremy Webb is an actor, director and Broadway producer.
As a producer/director, he created “Broadway Dreams” for The Kurt Weill Festival (Dessau, Germany) and directed “BackTalk” by Rob Ackerman at Westport Country Playhouse (Script in Hand), “The Soldier’s Tale” and “Camelot” (Gulf Coast Symphony), “Rabbit Hole” (Actor’s Workshop), “Secret Garden” (South Carolina Festival of Flowers) and “I Carry Your Heart” by Georgette Kelly for Hope on Stage (premiere).
As an actor, Webb appeared in “Take Me Out” and “Burn This” on Broadway, the national tour of “Girl from The North Country;” and productions of “The Glorious Ones” at Lincoln Center Theatre (original cast recording), “Tabletop” (Drama Desk Award), “Help” (Shed) and “The Baltimore Waltz” (Signature).
At Gulf Coast Symphony, he appeared in “South Pacific” and “Oklahoma!” with Siri Howard at the Barbara B. Mann Performing Arts Hall and directed “The Soldier’s Tale” and “Camelot” at the Music & Arts Community Center last year.
He is thrilled to return to Gulf Coast Symphony and the Barbara B. Mann Performing Arts Hall for “1776.”
“It's a Tony Award-winning Broadway musical from 1969,” Webb noted. “With a brilliant book by Peter Stone, it tells the story of what it took for our founding fathers to get the Declaration of Independence written and signed. It depicts the backstage antics and finagling that was going on and also finally how much controversy and compromise it took in order to get all of the colonies to agree unanimously to sign onto this document to free us from King George's rule and go to war against the British, who were already fighting against Washington's troops in the North.”
The latter fact surprises some people, but it’s true. At the time Adams, Jefferson, Franklin, Hamilton and the others were negotiating and writing the Declaration of Independence, the British were already engaged in battles in Boston, Concord and Lexington.
While Peter Stone’s book tells the tale of the Second Continental Congress, it does so through Sherman Edwards’ music and lyrics. A former history teacher turned songwriter, Edwards spent several years researching and developing the musical, which focuses on the events surrounding the signing of the Declaration of Independence.
“The music is spectacular and one of those great examples of how a truly great Broadway musical score can move the story forward through song,” Webb noted. “More and more, it’s becoming less and less frequent to hear full symphony orchestrations on stage. So, this experience is rare. There's a lot of productions of ‘1776’ going on this year across America because it's our 250th anniversary. But I don't know where else you're going to go to hear it played, the score played, by a full roster of musicians.”
In that, Gulf Coast Symphony’s production of “1776” will be aided by the size and acoustics of the Barbara B. Mann Performing Arts Hall.
“This is a show that was built for the Barbara B. Mann,” Webb said. “What you see literally in this show is the Congress come to life. You have John Hancock straight up center as the president of the Congress, and McNair and Thompson to his sides, the custodian and the secretary, and then representatives from all 13 of the colonies, and as I said, behind them, 40 musicians. So, there isn't a more perfect show to see at the Barbara B. Mann Performing Arts Hall.”
While the show is dominated by male actors, it wouldn’t work without the presence of Abigail Adams and Martha Jefferson.
“There's a lot of testosterone in this play, so you need the antithesis,” Webb noted. “But these are strong women with bold ideas, supporting their husbands in important ways, presenting them with ideas. Both of these marriages, in different ways, the Adamses and the Jeffersons, are examples of partnerships. Thomas Jefferson couldn't have written the Declaration of Independence without the support of his younger bride, Martha. Similarly, John and Abigail Adams are a true team, a partnership. It's brilliant the way the creators structured the show and the way that the ladies sort of get us ready and willing to step back into the Congress for the next big argument.”
Support for WGCU’s arts & culture reporting comes from the Estate of Myra Janco Daniels, the Charles M. and Joan R. Taylor Foundation, and Naomi Bloom in loving memory of her husband, Ron Wallace.
