This spring, the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Museum will present Reunion - A Musical Epic in a Miniature. Reunion is a musical play about a troupe of actors in the 1890's who are performing a show about Lincoln and the Civil War. The musical is an attempt to tell the story of the Civil War through the eyes of those who took up the Union cause - an intersection of theatre and history, weaving together songs, visual images and dialogue. Set on April 14, 1890, twenty-five years to the day of Lincoln's death, the play is designed as Victorian entertainment - the great American epic as it might have been told by a 19th century Homer and a wandering company of actors, six to be exact, who share the journeys of Union men and women swept by events into the war. In this case, the Yankee Homer is none other than Harry Hawk, an actor who occupied center stage the night of April 14, 1865, as his fellow thespian, John Wilkes Booth, dashed past him after shooting the President of the United States.

The musical's script is written by Jack Kyrieleison from a story by Kyrieleison and Ron Holgate, with traditional music from the period arranged by Michael O'Flaherty. Kyrieleison scripted the play from actual speeches, letters, diaries, military orders - all written by men and women who were there. Their experience is woven into a powerful presentation.

The musical premiered at the Goodspeed Opera House in Connecticut (under the title "Battle Cry of Freedom") in 1996, and with its new title, was subsequently produced off-Broadway in New York in 1999 and Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C. in 2000.