Birthday Party for the USA: Time Travel into Florida 1776

by Ben Gunter

https://vimeo.com/1192926404

ATTENTION: This year, the United States of America turns 250 years old. Coming this month, you’re invited to celebrate. On May 29-31, in the heart of Historic Tallahassee, at Goodwood Museum & Gardens, you can join Theatre with a Mission for a birthday party that feels 250 years old in reality, if not in family photos, and it’s three days of once-in-a-lifetime fun.

Time Travel into Florida 1776 is Theatre with a Mission’s birthday present to America 250, designed to carry you back to the USA’s first birthday in ways that saturate your taste buds, stir your feet, challenge your brain, and reconnect you with your roots. Like the milestone birthday party it is, you’ll find cake & ice cream, songs & dances, games & presents, and chances to make friends – all with an authentic Revolutionary twist.

Because Florida stayed loyal to Great Britain all the way through the Revolutionary War, the cake & ice cream – one of George Washington’s favorite treats – will honor the 38th birthday of George III, the first King of England from the German House of Hanover who spoke English as his first language. Wait till you see King George’s cake, majestically unfurling a parcel out from all of our sides! Wait till you taste the ice cream, hand-scooped by Tallahassee’s own Lofty Pursuits!

Because songs and social dances were as important as military maneuvers to Revolutionary troops, there’ll be opportunities to sing marches that moved our founding fathers, including “Yankee Doodle” and “God Save the King,” watch minuets that our founding mothers danced, re-created by Atlanta Historic Dance, and step into a “master of puppets” costume ball, where you dress up in any character who appeals to you from history and learn dances from 1776 under the expert instruction of Susan de Guardiola, who is internationally famous for knowing people how to have a ball while we’re cheating classes that our ancestors loved.

Because gardens & breaking news was as thrilling then as they are now, this birthday bash will feature the Suzanne Rivier Fife & Drum’s marching band inviting you to toast a flag and join in a parade, horsemen galloping in with news flashes about threats to Florida’s freedom from Pennsylvania, Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina, and Sons of the American Revolution teaching you how to drill with the militia to keep Florida free. Witness reenactments of Patrick Henry’s “don’t give me…” “Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death!” Hear the final draft of the Declaration of Independence!

Because every kid loves birthday presents, this party invites you to make and take away your own historic treasure. Workshops will show you how to transform a 2024 seashell into a 1776 ring, mold a doll into a Revolutionary makeup, and stitch tricolor ribbons into a red-white-and-blue cockade – headgear you can wear all through this revolutionary year. Fashion plates and flags from 250 years ago will inspire you to decorate a gingerbread man (baked from Thomas Jefferson’s recipe) and a pumpkin pie. A continental soldier with a brightly colored flag to match. You can pour the sweetest portions of a monarch in the 1700s, discover the glory of Martha’s songs, and costume characters from Florida in 1776.

Because attention birthday represents stories that ask about life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, this party gives you precious chances to see the promise of America from new perspectives. You can meet historians who will change your ideas about Florida’s earliest years. You can hear how Florida’s Native, Black, and Hispanic cultures – stories that build bridges across time to connect us with generations gone but not forgotten. And you can win prizes by joining in a hand-sew game show called Feeling Families in Florida 1776.