BIO for 1776 (BLT)

The year: 1976. John, a freshman in high school, failing his required speech/drama/debate class. His teacher, a short, stentorian Egyptian with the unlikely name “Wedge Crouch.” The offer: a passing grade in exchange for playing George Read in 1776. Thus began an endless journey as John was inexorably drawn into the world of live theatre, never to return yet now come full circle. Or is it – perhaps – an egg?

1776 Revisited - John and Abigail

Well gang now I'm doing 1776 again - this time as Stephen Hopkins, for the Bellevue Little Theatre.

Since I started directing, I've become much more interested in background research for the plays I'm involved in. It's kind of like the changeover marks in movies - once you know that they exist, you always see them. So anyway, here's an interesting bit about John and Abigail Adams.

John catalogs Abigail's faults (she asked him to): http://www.masshist.org/digitaladams/aea/cfm/doc.cfm?id=L17640507ja
And she answers: http://www.masshist.org/digitaladams/aea/cfm/doc.cfm?id=L17640509aa

This kind of teasing is something that most of us would never expect from people of that time. They were not yet married - it's the kind of exchange one might see between high-school sweethearts (John was 29 and Abigail was 20) They were third cousins, but then, so were a lot of people in the colonies.

At about this time they were writing to each other daily - sometimes more often. John was being inoculated for smallpox - the method used was to expose the patient to known mild cases of the disease, under close doctor's care. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inoculation - it's kinda yucky how they did it) All his letters were smoked before being sent, and after being delivered, thinking that this killed the disease. (Parents used a similar method of inoculation, up until the time that killed-virus injections became the norm. One kid in the neighborhood got measles or chicken pox, it was sleepover time.) Once it became common knowledge that people who got cowpox were immune to smallpox, then smallpox inoculation wasn't so popular anymore and was eventually banned because it was FREAKING DANGEROUS. John got off light, but this procedure sometimes killed people - 2% as opposed to 20% of those who got it naturally.

You can also see that by now they were regularly using pet names for each other in their letters. John called Abigail "Diana" after the Roman goddess of the moon, and she called him "Lysander" after the Spartan war hero. When John was in the Continental Congress, Abigail signed her letters "Portia", the very patient wife of Roman politician Brutus. No doubt she needed patience!

I'll write more as I come across stuff that interests me.