A One-Person Play Written and Performed by
Mike Kiernan
Directed by Tom Hunter 

 

 Part One – Before the Emancipation Proclamation

Part Two – After Emancipation - January 1863 – 65  

  Lincoln is composed of seventeen scenes woven together and presented is a seamless narrative. Eight of the scenes highlight passages from John Brown’s Body by Stephen Vincent Benet, which are quoted verbatim. They form the spiritual core of the work. A study of the literature and letters of the Civil War period reveals many of the sources that Benet used for John Brown’s Body, including Sandburg’s Abraham Lincoln. I have gone to many of those same sources and written additional vignettes.  

I have tried to be accurate where historical fact is ascertainable and I depend heavily on James McPherson’s Battle Cry of Freedom and David Donald’s Lincoln. However, artistic license has been used for certain thoughts and feelings attributed to historical characters and to fictional characters.

 

For information, contact:
Mike Kiernan
Box 185
Sharon, MA 02067
 

(781) 784-5666

 

Click here to email

 

Mike Kiernan was presented the Outstanding Performance Award  for a Solo Performance in 1999 by the Independent Reviewers of New England at their awards ceremony at the Massachusetts College of Art on March 20, 2000. This was for his play, Lincoln.

 

 

 

 

Housatonic Valley Regional High School  

Falls Village, Connecticut

February 14, 2003

Dear Mike,

Many thanks, on behalf of the faculty and students of Housatonic Valley Regional High School, for your wonderful presentation, “Lincoln.”  We truly appreciate the work you did and the distance you traveled to bring it to us.

Your performance was a hit with students and faculty alike! You were able to bring personality to so many historical figures that the students recognize only as more names from their textbook. Most importantly, they left the performance with a new image of Lincoln, based upon both beautiful language and rock-solid scholarship.

Following your program, several students stopped me in the hall and engaged me in a discussion of the Dred Scott case. “Was this Taney the same one put on the Supreme Court by Andrew Jackson?” “How could one man serve on the court so long?” “If Taney made bad decisions, why was he able to keep his job?” The discussion made it abundantly clear to me why performances such as “Lincoln” are an integral part of a high school history program, for the sheer emotion generated on the stage caused the students to become interested in the types of questions essential to understanding our history and government.

I recommend your performance to all high school American history classes, and certainly hope that we can bring you back to Housatonic in the future!

Sincerely,

Peter C. Vermilyea

Social Studies Department Chairman

 

 

The Lincoln Group of Boston

FOUNDED 1938

December 15, 2002

I realize that Mike Kiernan's one-man Lincoln play is in great demand in and around the Boston-Providence area. No wonder; the performance is a fine mixture of scholarship and drama. It shows familiarity not only with the most important Lincoln speeches and letters, but also a working knowledge of how Lincoln has been portrayed in our most memorable prose and poetry. Lincoln, the shrewd, sagacious politician, is juxtaposed by another Lincoln, this one the conscience of his generation. I heartily recommend his performance to any group searching for a better understanding of our Sixteenth President.

William F. Hanna

President

East Bridgewater High School

East Bridgewater, Massachusetts

February 2, 2002

Dear Mike:

   On Behalf of the East Bridgewater High School History dept. I wish to thank you for your memorable performance of "Lincoln" on January 8, 2002. It was a pleasure to work with an accommodating artist of your skill. You clearly understood the "climate of the times" and the historical chronology of American History. Your dramatic narrative touched the very core of the crisis environment in the United States during the turbulent decades leading up to the Civil War. The noble spirit of Abraham Lincoln, and the moral issues of slavery and racism, as elements in the character development of the United States of  America, are evident in your  presentation. 

   The complexity of historical material covered in Mike Kiernan's seventy minute narrative left this teacher in awe of his knowledge and talents as an actor.

Sincerely,

Rui David Santos

East Bridgewater High School

 

Whitman-Hanson Regional High School

Whitman, Massachusetts

January 12, 2001

Dear Mr. Kiernan:

Thank you for a great performance and a wonderful afternoon. We enjoyed both the play itself, and the discussion that was held afterwards. We truly appreciate your willingness to visit our school and enhance the academic experience of our student body.

Your performance on the era of the Civil War and the life of Abraham Lincoln was both interesting and informative. I found the play historically accurate, and it both reinforced and enriched the knowledge base of the students. It is rare that our students get the opportunity to experience a performance of that nature. They were impressed with your depth of knowledge, and your ability to perform through memorization.

It was apparent that you went to a great deal of time researching and preparing for the presentation. This did not go unnoticed by the students, who had many positive things to say. The play and the discussion were both academically challenging. Yet, you managed to present your ideas to the students in a manner that was developmentally appropriate without compromising the academic nature of the material. This unique delivery was well received by the students.

I hope you enjoyed the day as much as we did.

Sincerely,

Robert P. Davis, History and Social Studies Department

 

Newspaper Review 

Patriot Ledger

  Quincy, MA June 12/13, 1999 By Ellen Brams

"Mike Kiernan … has combined two lifelong avocations -as an actor and as an avid student of history - in developing a thoroughly researched one-man show presenting the life of Abraham Lincoln as seen against the background of the Civil War. 

Kiernan was born in Memphis and grew up in St. Louis, and he recalls hearing tales of his great-grandfather, who joined the Union Army at 18, spent time as a Confederate prisoner, was repatriated and later fought in the Tennessee campaigns. 

Kiernan and his exposure to Civil War stories on both sides of the conflict whetted his appetite for more knowledge. As a young man, he read Carl Sandburg's biography of Lincoln, and that began a lifelong quest that had led him to devour all the scholarly books he could find on Lincoln and the Civil War. In addition, he has made many trips to key battlefields of the Civil War, to make sure every minute detail imparted in his one-man show was accurate. 

In 1995, Kiernan was cast as an understudy by director Tom Hunter in a production of 'John Brown's Body,' Stephen Vincent Benet's Civil War epic that was being produced at the Orpheum Theater in Foxboro. 

Kiernan took the opportunity to further immerse himself in Benet's research. In his show, he draws often on passages from this work as well as the sources for it. He weaves this material into 13 scenes incorporating his own colorful vignettes that give the observer a look at Lincoln the man, his strengths and weaknesses, his relationship with Congress and the military. 

The narrative unfolds with no set, few props and no costume changes. Kiernan uses informative maps and banners to acquaint the audience with the geography of the Civil War. 

One thing he does not do is make himself up to look like Lincoln. He explains his lack of whiskers by pointing out that Lincoln was clean shaven for most of his life and only grew facial hair later in life, somewhat in response to a schoolgirl's letter suggesting that whiskers would make him look more presidential. 

There is a plethora of historical information in the hour and a quarter presentation -on the Missouri Compromise, the Dred Scott decision, John Brown's raid at Harper's Ferry, the Emancipation Proclamation and Lee's surrender. 

Kiernan is also aware of the effect of music in conveying a theatrical effect, and nostalgic violin strains of Shyang Puri, who studies at the New England Conservatory of Music, provide haunting interludes for his performance."