Kickstarter

This production of "1776" will happen in downtown Ithaca, New York...opening November 2 and closing on Election Day, 2012...236 years since democracy and freedom were declared by the Continental Congress...56 men who met on July 4th 1776 to sign their names to the single most dynamic document in the political history of mankind.  There was the Magna Carta signed in Runnymeade, England nearly half a millenium previous.  Then there was the Declaration of Independence, enacted on that hot summer's day in Philadelphia, creating the United States of America.  What better time is there for us to celebrate  those magnificent gentlemen who pledged their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor so that we might live free, centuries later in 2012.  They dreamed a dream that we are living.  They were not perfect, they were human.  We are not perfect, and we make mistakes as they made mistakes, but never before in the history of mankind, had any colony declared unilaterally its complete and utter independence from its colonizing parent.  This Tony Award winning musical play, entitled "1776", written by Peter Stone and Sherman Edwards is a powerful re-creation of those heady days...set to music and song that speak to the unmistakingly human moments of those men in that first Congress of the United STATES of America.  I have chosen to tap the musical resources of the Savage Club of Ithaca to fill the shoes of these great men and some of the women who stood with them to make history.  This is a performing arts club in existence for 117 years, filled with unique and fabulously talented artists ranging in age from 35-95.  The show will be staged in the basilica of the First Baptist Church of Ithaca, where the ringing voices of Franklin, Jefferson, Adams, Dickinson, and Rutledge among all the others will resound from the rafters with words and ideas heard round the world.  That's what I will bring to the stage in Ithaca for the people of the Finger Lakes and beyond... this Election season.  I thank you in advance for your "kicking in" to see this show come to laughing, cursing, fighting, hoping, freedom-loving passionate life.

Yours, J.G. Hertzler, Director