New Play from Simple8 To Examine the Assassination of Abraham Lincoln This Autumn

The award-winning ensemble Simple8 has announced the new play, Land of The Free, that dissects the life of the actor John Wilkes Booth and how he came to assassinate President Abraham Lincoln in 1865. Presented in the lead up to the most contentious American presidential election since the time of the Civil War, the show will examine the present by looking back to the past when it debuts at Southwark Playhouse Borough in October and November.

Combining live music and vivid ensemble storytelling, visiting playhouses, parlours, swamps, taverns and battlefields across 19th Century America, Land of the Free will tell the full story for the first time in British theatre of John Wilkes Booth and his mysterious past. Booth’s background is one of parental bullying, professional frustration, racism, populist politics and celebrity; a background intertwined with the very fabric of America, where anyone can rise to the greatest heights and where liberty must be defended at all costs. At a time when the issues emanating from the Civil War resound across the USA, the story of John Wilkes Booth and Abraham Lincoln is more urgent than ever.

A lot happens in the name of liberty. In 1865 an actor called John Wilkes Booth strode into a theatre and assassinated President Lincoln. Before pulling the trigger he cried "Sic semper tyrannis" (thus always to tyrants). Who was he? What led him to it? Why is it relevant now? And is it an American inevitability that the freedom embedded within the Constitution will always grind against the equality the society strives for? 

Twice winners of the Peter Brook Ensemble Award, Simple8 is a critically-acclaimed theatre ensemble who specialise in creating worlds out of nothing – producing innovative, bold new plays that tackle big ideas using large casts. They create new writing through extensive research and development, inspired by material that is rarely explored. Using a variety of techniques – poor theatre, mime, live music and song, puppetry and magic – Simple8 aim to put on new plays that are fun, inventive, original and daring.

Sebastian Armesto and Dudley Hinton said, “it’s an extraordinary and compelling story – one that is relatively unknown in the UK – and a story which has the theatre at its heart: Booth was a famous actor, he chose a theatre as the place to assassinate Lincoln. And we felt a deep and direct connection between the issues being fought out during the Civil War and the ones we see daily on our screens today – unresolved issues with liberty, and what liberty means, firmly at their core.”

Southwark Playhouse is a registered charity that delivers a year-round programme of entertaining and enriching work. Southwark Playhouse operates two separate venues, ‘Southwark Playhouse Borough’ and its newest theatre ‘Southwark Playhouse Elephant’ which opened in January 2023. Southwark Playhouse has always prided itself in telling stories and inspiring the next generation of storytellers and theatre makers, where support for the community has been rooted at the core of the organisation.

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