America Again

Lightning Rod Special (LRS) is in the research phases of a new performance created in response to the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Set in a post-apocalyptic theme park, this performance interrogates our attraction to America’s founding myth. For thirteen years, LRS has created original performances to ask complex and controversial cultural questions. Our ensemble-generated work is both physical and cerebral, and unabashedly entertaining. Through an iterative process utilizing traditional research (reading, interviewing, site visits), performance research (improvisations, experiments with genres, actor-driven world-building), and scriptwriting, we craft performances that tackle lightning rod topics in ways that scramble theatrical conventions and intellectual assumptions.

In this new work, a group of starving reenactors endlessly perform looping dioramas of the American Revolution. Inspired by post-apocalyptic speculative fiction—particularly the darkly comic short stories of George Saunders set in skewed American cultural institutions—distorted dioramas unfold in an underground “Museum of America,” set another 250 years into the future. Each reenactor embodies a key figure at the encampment at Valley Forge, a site mythologized as the crucible of the Revolution, where soldiers lay sick, hungry, and near defeat—mirroring the landscapes of post-apocalyptic fiction. Each of these characters hold different perspectives on the purpose of their work and the ideals of America, and each is shaped by a distinct dramatic style. In current drafts of the script, characters include: a white woman who has disguised herself to gain admittance to the troupe as a French fiery teenage Marquis de Lafayette; an Iranian outsider performing a Schwarzenegger-inflected version of the foreign military general Baron von Steuben; an extraordinarily tall white man portraying a Christ-like George Washington, suffering with imposter syndrome and aching feet; a Black man as a rapping Alexander Hamilton, conflicted by the promises of American meritocracy and the pitfalls of bootstrap ideology; and a white man representing General Conway with Shakespearean gravitas, hunched and scheming against Washington, driven like Richard III by an insatiable lust for power. These characters emerged through research and rehearsal, and were developed in collaboration with the performers. They were created to explore complex and urgent questions of American identity in relation to nationality, race, gender, religion, and class.

As in all of LRS’s work, the interests, ideas, and lived experiences of the ensemble shape the final work and, as a result, this performance about American mythmaking will reflect a plurality of voices rather than a single authoritative perspective. Lead artist and director, Mason Rosenthal, has led several collaborative workshops of performance research for this piece. In preparation, LRS has also made frequent trips to The Museum of the American Revolution and conducted on-site observations of historical interpreters firing cannon at the Battle of Trenton and baking fire cake at Valley Forge.