In his four years as US president, Abraham Lincoln was said to have attended Washington’s National Theatre more than a hundred times. He was a devotee of Shakespeare, once writing to an actor: “I think nothing equals Macbeth – it is wonderful.” Lincoln was watching a show when he was assassinated at Ford’s Theatre in Washington in 1865, seeding the sarcastic joke: “Other than that, how was the play, Mrs Lincoln?”
The play’s the thing that’s now in danger. America’s love affair with the stage – embodied by Lincoln and fellow presidential theatregoers such as Bill Clinton – is on the rocks. From coast to coast, the regional theatre movement is facing the biggest crisis in its 75-year history.
