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.  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, a Cornellian, 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 several of the shoes of these great men along side the women who stood with them to make history. The Savage Club of Ithaca was born 117 years ago, dedicated to the performing arts and love of performance. The show will be staged in the sactuary of the First Baptist Church of Ithaca, where the ringing voices of Ben Franklin, Thomas  Jefferson, John Adams, John Dickinson, and  Edward Rutledge among all the others will resound from the rafters. That's what we 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