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Characters Portrayed By Wes William Yeatman, Lighthouse Keeper
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Edwin, The Other Brother When Edwin Booth's mercurial and unstable younger brother, John Wilkes, stepped into the presidential box at Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C. that April night in 1865, he fired a shot that changed the lives of millions - including his older brother. On stage in Boston that night, Edwin Booth found himself suddenly pitched from the heights of fame into the maelstrom surrounding the Abraham Lincoln assassination conspiracy - from his rightful place as the most admired actor in the United States, to the brother of the first man in history to assassinate a freely elected head of state. When Abraham Lincoln died, so did the career of Edwin Booth…or so it seemed. Even as John Wilkes was being hunted through the Southern Maryland marshlands, his older brother watched as his remaining brothers and brother-in-law were arrested - a fate Edwin escaped only due to the influence of powerful friends in New York. But Edwin Booth remained under suspicion, and under house arrest, and was brought in the custody of federal officers to testify at the trial of the Lincoln conspirators. Such was the stigma attached to the name Booth, that the most famous actor on the continent felt it necessary to release a statement of loyalty to the press apologizing for and disavowing his loved younger brother and pleading for peace for himself and the rest of his family; and then the “Prince of Players” retired…to stand before the footlights no more.
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But the greatest actor of his generation could, sadly, find little else to suit his talents or feed his family. In 1866, before the curtain rose on a performance of Hamlet at the theatre owned by Booth in New York, a solitary figure appeared onstage, placed a chair near the wings and sat down. Edwin Booth, determined to spare the rest of the cast any scorn that might be heaped on them for his presence in the play, had decided to let the audience have their chance at him before the play began. The reaction in the crowd was overwhelming! When they recognized the dark, intense figure they erupted in a standing ovation, welcoming the greatest of American actors back to the public. It was a place he would retain for the next twenty-eight years. Edwin Booth had returned. Of all the fates that could have befallen the leading member of America's best-known theatrical family, that of being remembered only as the brother of John Wilkes Booth is, perhaps, the worst! My portrayal of Edwin Booth is meant to restore some of the balance that rightly belongs in the history of this supremely talented and tragic family. It is the story of the American theatre and of the greatest tragedy in our history, the Civil War. What was it like to face the public as Edwin Booth did - once the darling of audiences from Australia to England, now known best as the brother of the "Great Emancipator's" assassin? What could he feel, having been the most famous face in America, now reduced to one of the most infamous? And what now…where to begin to put back together a life shattered in the instant it took to kill a president? From the heights, to the depths and finally to return as an icon of American culture - it is a story of tragedy and personal redemption worthy of Shakespeare himself; a story perhaps best told by the foremost actor of his day - Edwin Booth.
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