Brady of Broadway A New Play for One Character about Civil War photographer Mathew Brady

UPDATE!

PHOTOGRAPHER MATHEW BRADY RETURNS TO LIFE IN GETTYSBURG!

 

The Gettysburg Civil War Theater will present a new production of Wm. B. Becker’s acclaimed one-man play BRADY OF BROADWAY this summer, near the historic battlefield that has become a national shrine.

Performances begin July 14, 2000 and are scheduled to run through September 16.

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The Gettysburg Civil War Theater is located in the historic GAR Building at 53 East Middle Street. The GCWT production of BRADY OF BROADWAY stars Tom Rodgers and is directed by Susan Russell.

We meet Mathew Brady in 1891, as he’s being rediscovered by a newspaper reporter. Brady is old and broke and plying his trade in a shabby studio above a train station in Washington, D.C. But he has his memories–of revealing portrait sessions with Lincoln, Edgar Allan Poe, Walt Whitman, Frederick Douglass, Susan B. Anthony and others. And Brady is also preparing for renewed glory–with a slide-show of his famous Civil War photographs at Carnegie Hall.

 Brady never lived to present his slide-show. But in BRADY OF BROADWAY the audience gets to see a grippingly dramatic “rehearsal” of that show, using photographs copied directly from original Civil War prints at the Library of Congress.

John Dow’s masterful performance was directed by William Largess and produced by Jewell Robinson for the Smithsonian’s “Cultures in Motion” series.

In previous productions, BRADY OF BROADWAY was nominated by The Detroit News as Best New Play of the Season. Cleveland newspaper critic Herb Hammer called the show “a vivid and fascinating tale about the life and times of this colorful character… Becker’s play flanked by continuing slides showing many of Mr. Brady’s photographs keeps your attention riveted to the stage.”