Appomattox

April 1865 - Ulysses S. Grant, general of the armies of the United States, meets Robert E. Lee, general of the confederate forces, at Appomattox Court House to sign the treaty that will end the Civil War. The days preceding the signing are depicted through the eyes of President Abraham Lincoln and his wife Mary, of Julia Grant and Mary Custis Lee and of others on the front lines of history. Will this be the healing act needed to bring a divided country back together?

 

February 1965. St. James Baptist Church deacon Jimmie Lee Jackson is shot by an Alabama state trooper during a peaceful protest for civil rights. The incident spark's Martin Luther King, Jr.'s protest march from Selma to Montgomery and for Lyndon Johnson to galvanize his political influence to push the Voting Rights Act through Congress.

 

Although separated by 100 years and 600 miles, the play's events are inextricably linked by issues at the core of the American soul: freedom, rights, race and a stubborn belief in and hope for a brighter future.

Appomattox examines the final week of the Civil War and the immediate aftermath of the treaty signed in April 1865, while also considering the fact that 100 years later, the root cause of the Civil War - the suppression of one race by another - had still not been addressed and is still, to this day, a more than contentious issue.

This Guthrie commission of Appomattox, a new play based on Hampston's original 2007 opera collaboration with composer Philip Glass, will be presented in the fall of 2012 alongside two of Hampton's other works.