Article discussing canceled performance of The Octoroon after Lincoln's assassination

Article discussing canceled performance of The Octoroon after Lincoln's assassination

On the evening of April 14, 1865, at a special performance of the comedy, Our American Cousin, by English playwright Tom Taylor, starring English actress and stage manager Laura Keene, President Abraham Lincoln was shot. And killed by John Wilkes Booth whose family were a major dynasty of American actors and whose brother was famous actor Edwin Booth. The playbills for Our American Cousin had included a notice that the next play to be staged at Ford’s was to be Dion Boucicault’s The Octoroon and by 15th April, a large poster appeared outside the theater advertising the forthcoming performance. That performance did not take place and the theater was closed from 14th April until the execution of Lincoln’s assassin, John Wilkes Booth, in July 1865. Ford had decided to reopen on July 10 also with The Octoroon but again the show was cancelled as a result of threats against both the stage manager and the theater. This article, from the New York Herald, declared the attempt to reopen "an attempt to coin the blood of the great man." Later that year, Ford’s theatre was repurposed as a federal government building and it was not until 1968 that it would again function as a theater.