Mud, Mystics

Quincy Lincoln Sesquicentennial Archive

City of Quincy Lincoln Bicentennial Commission 706 Maine Quincy, Illinois 62301

Play Celebrates Quincy’s Role in Great Debate

Famous Illinois Playwright Sets Stage
For Important Debate Between Renowned
Republican, Democracy Party Leaders

Event Launches Community’s Official Celebration
Of Sesquicentennial Celebration, ‘Reunion Tour ‘08’

Play Is Free of Charge and Open to the General Public

New Play Details Quincy in Days Before Lincoln-Douglas Debate,
Launches Community’s Debate Sesquicentennial Celebration

It had rained in Quincy in each of the 16 days leading up to Wednesday, October 13, 1858, the day Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas mounted a pine platform built on the east side of Washington Square for the sixth of seven debates in their grueling contest for Douglas’s seat in the U.S. Senate.

The mud that followed the two-week downpour set the stage for the Quincy debate – and for the title of a new play written especially for Quincy’s sesquicentennial celebration of the Lincoln-Douglas Debate. Written by Illinois Playwright Ken Bradbury, the award-winning author of several Lincoln-related plays, “Mud, Mystics and Molasses: Lincoln and Douglas Come to Quincy,” which was staged at 7 p.m. Saturday, September 6, at the Quincy Community Theater in the Oakley- Lindsay Center in Quincy.

The play was open to the public free of charge. Seating was on a first-come, first-served basis.

“Ken’s play served as the threshold event for our celebration and commemoration of the debate between the nation’s most powerful Democrat and, until then, a largely unknown Illinois lawyer drawn back into politics over the possible extension of slavery,” said Chuck Scholz, chairman of Quincy’s Lincoln Bicentennial Commission.

“Ken and his players gave us a lively look at the issues that brought the debaters to Quincy and weaves local Quincy stories into the political fabric of the 1850s,” Scholz said.

The Quincy Society of Fine Arts, the Quincy Community Theater and the Oakley-Lindsay Center were sponsors of the play.

The local Lincoln Bicentennial Commission commissioned the Bradbury work. It is a narrative and musical play that uses Quincy newspaper accounts, first-person recollections and the antics of a few fictitious characters to tell the story of Quincy in the days leading up to the Lincoln-Douglas Debate in Washington Square.

Some of the characters recall their friendship with Douglas, whose home was on the northewest corner of Third and Jersey after he had been assigned to Quincy in 1841 as the youngest member of the Illinois Supreme Court. Other characters remember Lincoln’s first attack at Kendall Hall, then at the southwest corner of Sixth and Maine Streets, on Douglas’s 1854 Kansas-Nebraska Act, which replaced the Missouri Compromise with popular sovereignty, opening the door to slavery’s extension.

Bradbury tells those and other stories to illustrate the events in Quincy just before the political candidates climbed the steps onto a pine platform built for the debate on the east side of Washington Square.

The Commission will sponsor a full celebration of the Quincy Debate in a “Reunion Tour” of Lincoln and Douglas that will run from October 11 through 13 in Quincy.

Meet the Playwright

Ken Bradbury

Author of

Mud, Mystics, and Molasses. . .
Lincoln and Douglas Come to Quincy!

Ken Bradbury, until recently a teacher at Triopia High School for 37 years, and now an instructor at Lincoln Land College, is a resident of Arenzville, Illinois.

Since 1995, he has been named the most-produced author of school speech contest material in the United States, his material having won top honors in nearly all fifty states and Puerto Rico, as his name has appeared in more contests than any other author.

Ken is the author of The Coonridge Digest, a newspaper column that has won the Associated Press Award for “Best Humor Column.” The column appears in fourteen newspapers in Illinois and Missouri. He’s also the author of five books, The Coonridge Digest, Around the World with Freida Marie Crump, The Coonridge Devotions, Homerville.and his most recent book, Souptown.

The author of over 100 plays and musicals, he and co-author Robert Crowe recently won the Lincoln Library Award for the play, The Shadow of Giants which appeared on Public Television. He is also the co-author of the Lincoln musical, Abraham, which ran for ten years at Lincoln’s New Salem, and Distant Thunder, a musical reliving Lincoln’s early life.

Bradbury’s other Lincoln works include Mr. Lincoln’s Moon, concerning the Beardstown Duff Armstrong Trial, and his direction of Pittsfield’s Looking for Lincoln talking houses.

Bradbury is the winner of the University of Illinois Downstate Playwrights’ Award for The Spot, and his Cries of Faith has been performed both at Illinois College and the University of Illinois.

Although Bradbury was born in Quincy, he said, “Any town that would produce something like me, well, scares me.”

Meet the Players

Don Schneider (Stephen Douglas) is a copywriter for Neuhoff Media in Springfield with a long resume of theatrical credits, including the leading role in Distant Thunder, playing Thomas Reep, one of Lincoln’s earliest chroniclers. He and wife Linda are regular performers on the Springfield theatre scene. It’s always been his secret desire to appear in a science fiction musical…as soon as somebody writes one.

Greg Bergschneider (Abraham Lincoln) starred for many years as the great President in Jacksonville’s Bradbury-Crowe production of Shadow of Giants which went on to air on PBS. Much in demand as a portrayer of Lincoln, Greg’s kept busy on various stages and in school performances.

Travis Deaver (the boy) is currently a youth worker at Illinois School for the Deaf. His stage credits include many Bradbury productions, most recently Dinner is Served in Jacksonville. Travis also serves as instructor at the Green Pastures Camp for the Performing Arts.

Linda Schneider (ensemble) is the wife of tonight’s Stephen Douglas and in fact the two first met onstage while rehearsing a long-ago play. She is Emergency Medicine Residency Coordinator for Southern Illinois University School of Medicine when not onstage.

Sylvia Burke (ensemble) recently retired from a long teaching career at Illinois School for the Deaf and now resides in an idyllic little cottage on Franklin Lake. Her stage roles include Miss Hannigan in Annie, along with about a dozen Bradbury productions. One of her most recent roles was playing opposite Ken in his Singing at Seven.

Bob Large (ensemble) is a painting contractor from Jacksonville who been active in the Illinois theatre scene for 25 years. Among his most notable performances are as Springfield poet Vachel Lindsay in Vachel with a V,” and his one-man performance portraying evangelist and baseball player Billy Sunday. Bob appeared in the Bradbury-Crowe production of Abraham at Lincoln’s New Salem in a performance spanning 10 years and 82 performances.

Michael TenEyck (vocals and ensemble) is the minister at Pittsfield’s First Christian Church. His singing credits include a stint in Italy in opera plus appearing in Midwest productions of Jesus Christ Superstar. Prior to his time in Italy, Mike sang with the Ohio Light Opera Company.

Keith Bradbury (ensemble) is president of the Franklin Bank in Franklin, Illinois, and happens to be brother to tonight’s playwright. The two appeared together as Franklin and Adams in 1776 and as Sancho and Don Quixote in Man of La Mancha. Keith has also performed with the Springfield Muni Opera, the Jacksonville Theatre Guild, and the Pittsfield Theatre Guild.