19th Century American Theatre:
Harry Hawk's World

In some ways, REUNION is as much about the romance and tradition of 19th Century theatre in America as the tragedy of the Civil War. This seems only right. For one thing, the culminating act of the war occurred inside Ford's Theatre at the hand of arguably the country's most famous actor, John Wilkes Booth. For another, Lincoln's love for theatre and actors has been well documented. And important historical figures such as the peacock-vain General McClellan seem at times almost too theatrical to be true—he is even described by one soldier as striking a pose that seemed right out of a great play.

The show's central character, Harry Hawk, is loosely based on the real actor who was alone on stage with all eyes trained on him at the moment when Booth shot Lincoln. The real Hawk disappeared into relative obscurity after the traumatizing events, although his career onstage continued for a number of years afterwards.

Until the death of John Wilkes Booth's brother Edwin in 1893, Hawk declined to speak publicly about the assassination. Even so, for the next half century he never managed to separate his name from the events of Good Friday, 1865. In 1916, he passed away in quiet retirement on the Isle of Jersey as World War I raged in nearby France and Belgium. Remove the words about April 1865 from his tiny obituary in The New York Times, and virtually all that remains is “Harry Hawk, an actor.”