About This Event
In 1831, a 22-year-old Abraham Lincoln walked north from New Orleans, bound for Central Illinois, ready to start a new life in the small riverside community of New Salem. The myth of Abraham all starts here — tales of him as a bootstrappy autodidact, a straight-talking country boy, an expert wrestler and a good-hearted patriot.
LINCOLN IN NEW SALEM is a new experimental opera from the performance artist Corey Smith that looks at Abraham Lincoln's twenties through a kaleidoscope — a whirlwind of music, dance, and mythmaking for our most mythologized president.
Performed by: Courtney Mackedanz, Zachary Nicol, Bryan Saner, and Corey Smith.
LINCOLN IN NEW SALEM emerges from the work of Making Our History: Artists Render Lincoln's Legacies, a residency with the University of Illinois Springfield's Center for Lincoln Studies. A videofrom Making our History.
This performancewill coincide with another iteration of LINCOLN IN NEW SALEM at the Hyde Park Art Center for their GROUND FLOOR 2022 Exhibition. The work showing at HPAC presents the Lincoln story as a Virtual Reality film, shot on location in New Salem, Illinois. This work, a companion to the live performance, will be showing from December 10, 2022 until March 5, 2023.
All performances of LINCOLN IN NEW SALEM are sold out. Standby tickets may be available for purchase at the door starting one hour before the performance.
About Corey Smith
Corey Smith is a composer, writer, and performer from Chicago, Illinois. They have been an artist in residence at High Concept Labs, the University of Illinois Springfield, Light Box Detroit, the Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve, the Iowa Lakeside Laboratory, and Grin City. Their work has been seen at Links Hall, the Detroit Fringe Festival, Frank Lloyd Wright’s Emil Bach House, and numerous venues around the USA. Their longstanding project, The New Prairie School, has been featured by Architectural Digest.
Corey is an avid collaborator and has worked in various capacities as sound designer, director, performer, composer, and devisor with artists such as Lia Kohl, Jasmine Mendoza, Every House Has a Door, Rough House Puppet Theater Company, the Suburban Piano Quartet, Lindsey Barlag-Thornton, among many others. They received an MFA in Performance from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. More information is available at coreyds.com.
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Content Advisory
Steppenwolf does not offer advisories about subject matter, as sensitivities vary from person to person. If you have any questions about content, age-appropriateness or stage effects (such as strobe lights or theatrical fog) that might have a bearing on patron comfort, please contact the box office at 312-335-1650.