Tom Dugan brings the confederate general to life for one evening at the Tower Theatre
The room is empty but General Lee is not alone. Posterity sits in judgment, ready to render a verdict of traitor or patriot. How did the most trusted soldier in the United States Army become its greatest enemy? Why did this deeply religious man, firmly opposed to slavery and s
ecession, reject Lincoln’s offer to lead the Union Army and agree to fight for the Confederacy? Lee at Appomattox is the untold story of how one of our greatest war heroes became the most dangerous man in America.
Acclaimed stage, film and television actor Tom Dugan (Wiesenthal, Bones, ER) returns to Bend with his one-man-show Friday, April 10 at 7pm to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the end of the Civil War. Set just moments before Lee’s surrender to General Grant in 1865, this engaging drama places the audience in the jury box as Lee shares the extraordinary circumstances of his remarkable life.
“Dugan transports us onto the raging battlefields of Chancellorsville and Gettysburg and back to the Virginia farmhouse as Lee warns against simplifying our nation’s story into just good versus evil,” said Ray Solley, the executive director of the Tower Theatre Foundation.
Lee’s own words resonate with truth in 2015, “Fictionalized history teaches later generations to long for the good old days, which never really were, and to despise the little good that is granted us in this present world.”
During the days preceding the performance, Dugan will conduct school residencies in classrooms across Central Oregon. Those educational assemblies are made possible by donations to the Tower’s Stover Fund, and grants from The Oregon Community Foundation, The Clabough Foundation, The WHH Foundation and Children’s Edu-Investors Fund. Public performance sponsors are Steve and Cynde Magidson.
The presentation is also supported, in part, with funds provided by the Western States Arts Federation (WESTAF), the Oregon Arts Commission and the National Endowment for the Arts.
Lee at Appomattox is being performed for one night in celebration of the 150th anniversary of the end of the civil war.