A diary written by a 16-year-old Illinois boy who visited the 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago is the source material for a new musical. Sangamon Songs: A Musical Play by Tom Irwin and John W. Arden will be performed at Skokie Theatre for Performing Arts on Jan. 11 and 12, 2010.
After discovering Harry Glen Ludlam’s journal in his family farmhouse, Tom Irwin began composing an acoustic song cycle about late-nineteenth-century life of a teenager in a small town in Central Illinois. Funded by a Kickstarter campaign, his 2012 album Sangamon Songs collected twelve of the pieces, including one titled “Hurrah for the World’s Fair.”
John W. Arden developed the album into a musical play, which debuted in August 2019 at the Salem on Seventh theater in Petersburg, IL, and was performed again at the University of Illinois Springfield Studio Theatre in November.
Tickets to Sangamon Songs: A Musical Play are available through the Skokie Theatre for Performing Arts (7924 Lincoln Ave. in Skokie, Illinois).
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Some information provided by the Illinois Times and Patch.com.