Theater of War Productions was honored to return to the Aspen Ideas Festival earlier this week to present this year’s closing session, America in Her Own Words, to help celebrate and interrogate the 250th anniversary of the United States. Actors David Strathairn (Goodnight and Good Luck., Lincoln), Michael Potts (The Wire, True Detective), and Kathleen Chalfant (Familiar Touch, The Affair) performed excerpts from Fourth of July speeches by Abraham Lincoln, Frederick Douglass, and Susan B. Anthony to catalyze a guided audience discussion about how reckoning and repair are fundamental to the promise and process of American democracy.
The texts included sections from “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?” delivered by Frederick Douglass at an Independence Day celebration in Rochester, New York on July 5, 1852; “The Electric Cord Speech” delivered by Abraham Lincoln from the balcony of Tremont House in Chicago, Illinois on July 10, 1858; and “Declaration of Rights of the Women of the United States” written by Matilda Joslyn Gage, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Susan B. Anthony and read by Anthony on July 4, 1876 at Independence Hall in Philadelphia during the Centennial Celebration.
We are grateful to the panelists Abayomi Lewis (Singer; Poet; “American Idol” Contestant), Chuck Sams (Director, Indigenous Programs, Yale Center for Environmental Justice; Former Director, U.S. National Park Service), and Jeh Johnson (Former U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security; Chair, Board of Trustees, Columbia University) for candidly responding to these speeches and kicking off this powerful discussion.
Behind the scenes photos by Marjolaine Goldsmith.