The America Play

Once upon a time there was a theme park called the Great Hole of History. It was popular spot for honeymooners who, in search of “post-nuptial excitement,” would visit this hole and watch the daily historical parades. One of the visitors was a man who has how come to call himself The Founding Father. He was a digger by trade — grave digger — and he was struck by the size of the Hole and the pageantry of the place. He returns home with his wife, Lucy, a women who keeps secrets for the dead, and together they start a mourning business. Unfortunately, our hero cant get the Great Hole pageantry out of his head; the echoes of history speak to him and call him to greatness. At rise we meet this Founding Father, He has left his wife and child and gone out west to dig a huge replica of the Great Hole of History. 

In the hole sits our hero. He is dressed like Abraham Lincoln, complete with beard, wart. frock coat and stove pipe hat. He tells us the story of his own life (in third person) and tells us that he had become a very successful Abraham Lincoln impersonator! He’s so successful that people actually pay a penny to re-enact Lincoln’s assassination using our imposter-hero and a phony gun. Eventually, the Father dies and the second act sees his wife Lucy and thirty-five-year-old son, Brazil, a professional weeper visit the hole to dig for his Father’s remains. Listening to the past through her deaf-horn, Lucy hears echoes of gunshots and lurid stage-shows. When they dig  up the Founding Father’s body (he’s alive) they decide they have to lay him to rest for good. In the play’s last image, his son is trying to climb a ladder out of the Hole of History.