The America Play

“He digged the hole and the whole held him.” 

The Foundling Father says this at the beginning of the play, after a string of historical quotes. This statement indicates that the hole he dug began as a project that was meant to control his own history and destiny, but it ended up swallowing him into the whole of history.

“Emergency oh, Emergency, please put the Great Man in the ground.”

The Foundling Father repeats this phrase multiple times, a quote that he attributes to Mary Todd Lincoln. He is imagining a history in which he might also be centered as a gravedigger and revered as a hero alongside Lincoln.

“Being told from birth practically that he and the Great Man were dead ringers, more or less, and knowing that he, if he had been in the slightest vicinity back then, would have had at least a chance at the great honor of digging the Great Man’s grave.”

Although the Foundling Father believes that he resembles Lincoln, he recognizes that even if he had lived at the same time, his place in history would have still been very different. The most he could have hoped for as a Black gravedigger in the late 1800s was to be granted the privilege of digging Lincoln’s grave. In his reenactment he imagines a world in which he can walk in Lincoln’s footsteps as president.