It’s been in development for five years and has at least a year to go. On the eve of its out-of-town debut, the actor playing Lincoln quit. And the producers still need to raise another $15 million to bring the show to New York. There really is no business like show business. (Part three of a three-part series.) SOURCES:Christopher Ashley, artistic director of La Jolla Playhouse.Debby Buchholz, managing director of La Jolla Playhouse.Carmen Cusack, actor.Quentin Earl Darrington, actor.Joe DiPietro, playwright and lyricist.Crystal Monee Hall, composer, singer, actor.Ivan Hernandez, actor.Michael Rushton, professor of arts administration at Indiana University.Jeffrey Seller, Broadway producer.Alan Shorr, Broadway producer.Daniel Watts, writer, choreographer, actor. RESOURCES:3 Summers of Lincoln (2025)."Review: Visceral ‘3 Summers of Lincoln’ is thrilling and thought-provoking," by Pam Kragen (San Diego Union-Tribune, 2025)."What’s Wrong with the Theatre is What’s Wrong With Society," by Michael Rushton (ArtsJournal, 2023)."American Theater Is Imploding Before Our Eyes," by Isaac Butler (New York Times, 2023).The Moral Foundations of Public Funding for the Arts, by Michael Rushton (2023). EXTRAS:“How to Make the Coolest Show on Broadway,” by Freakonomics Radio (2024).“You Can Make a Killing, but Not a Living,” by Freakonomics Radio (2024).
Chapter 1: What is 'Three Summers of Lincoln' about?
In the first episode of this series, we heard about the creation of a new musical called Three Summers of Lincoln, as in Abraham Lincoln. The show is set during the Civil War and it centers around Lincoln's relationship with the abolitionist Frederick Douglass. The producers Alan Shore and Richard Winkler commissioned the playwright Joe DiPietro to write the script.
He brought along Daniel Watts as his co-lyricist and then the composer Crystal Monet-Hall. After three years of development, the Lincoln team held some workshop performances in New York that persuaded them they were ready to give the show its world premiere at the La Jolla Playhouse in San Diego, or at least almost ready.
Chapter 2: Who is involved in the musical's creation?
I just felt the narrative at the beginning wasn't as sharp as the rest of the show. That's DiPietro. The challenge in a musical like this is you're telling an epic story. I mean, how many different versions of the Civil War could you write? There needs to be a spine to it. How can we have the spine as clear as quickly as possible?
We felt, for instance, that the character of Mary Lincoln, she wasn't in the score as much, especially given the actress who is going to play that role.
That actress is Carmen Cusack, who has twice been nominated for a Tony Award on Broadway. And so DiPietro had Daniel Watts and Crystal Monet Hall come to his apartment on the Upper West Side to work on a new song for Mary Lincoln, a duet with Abraham. Hall played a demo she'd made on her own, a song called Twelve Rooms in Springfield.
Alive in twelve rooms. Alive in twelve rooms.
The song has the Lincolns thinking about going back home to Illinois if Abraham loses re-election for the presidency, which, considering how badly the war is going, seems likely.
That was actually good to hear again.
The three of them are sitting around DiPietro's dining room table. They've got laptops open to a Google Doc and to RhymeZone.com, the modern lyricist's best friend. They work together with the ease and trust of collaborators who've by now spent hundreds of hours like this.
It could be something like, does he envision his life in Springfield? Like in what's there in Springfield? Yeah. Like old dusty roads and grief.
I'm trying to find a thing he would, what would he be doing? Who would he be working with in the office? He'd be settling lawsuits with farmers, right? You know, like he's a country lawyer. Collection law was a collection lawyer who handled promissory notes, which were common in frontier Illinois.
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Chapter 3: What challenges does the musical face before its premiere?
For a nonprofit theater like La Jolla, that means collaborating with commercial producers in what's called an enhancement model. La Jolla actually started the enhancement model going back to Big River. Big River was a 1980s musical that we heard about in part one of the series. It launched the career of Broadway producer Rocco Landesman.
The commercial producer put more money into the show beyond what the Playhouse was going to spend to enhance the Playhouse's production to say, could we more fully develop the dance numbers? Could we more fully orchestrate it so we would hear what a full orchestra would sound like? Could we give it more rehearsal time?
Give me a sense of how much money a commercial producer might put toward a production like yours, dollar figures and or percentage figures.
It varies widely. It kind of depends at the moment that we're going to do it what the piece needs. That's in excess of the resources that we have at that moment to put into it.
Could it be as much as 30 or 40 percent? Yes, it could be. So when a show that originates at La Jolla does move on to Broadway, what's that deal look like from your end? Is it a dollar figure that you'd be guaranteed? Is it a percent of first dollars or after recoup? How does that work?
When it moves on, the playhouse participates in two levels. The reason that people come to the playhouse is because of that well-developed muscle of bringing new work forward. We are a creative participant, so we get a royalty percentage as well. Can you put a number on that? I'd rather not.
It's comfortably within the industry practice, what's classically referred to as the regional theater royalty, which can be anywhere from half a percentage point to three, depending on a lot of different things.
Let's talk about the Playhouse budget overall. What are the major contributors? Where does box office come in? Where does philanthropy come in? Government funding?
About a third of our revenue comes in as ticket revenue. A little more than a third comes in through philanthropy. We get some governmental support from banks. the city of San Diego and from the county and from the state, there was actually a fair amount of federal support that came into most regional theaters during the pandemic.
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Chapter 4: How does the casting change impact the show?
Chapter 5: What is the significance of La Jolla Playhouse in theater?
When it moves on, the playhouse participates in two levels. The reason that people come to the playhouse is because of that well-developed muscle of bringing new work forward. We are a creative participant, so we get a royalty percentage as well. Can you put a number on that? I'd rather not.
It's comfortably within the industry practice, what's classically referred to as the regional theater royalty, which can be anywhere from half a percentage point to three, depending on a lot of different things.
Let's talk about the Playhouse budget overall. What are the major contributors? Where does box office come in? Where does philanthropy come in? Government funding?
About a third of our revenue comes in as ticket revenue. A little more than a third comes in through philanthropy. We get some governmental support from banks. the city of San Diego and from the county and from the state, there was actually a fair amount of federal support that came into most regional theaters during the pandemic.
That was inordinately helpful, and I would hope that there's a world in which that could start again.
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Chapter 6: How do producers raise funds for new musicals?
Three Summers of Lincoln would have its debut at the La Jolla Playhouse in February of 2025. That meant starting to assemble cast and crew, a big cast and crew, in January for rehearsals, costume fittings, choreography, tech rehearsals, and much more. We flew out to see for ourselves, and we checked in with Christopher Ashley, the show's director.
As we're speaking now, we're just starting day one of the second week of Two Weeks of Tech.
For the past 18 years, Ashley has also been the artistic director at La Jolla, although next year he'll be moving to New York to take over the Roundabout Theater Company. Ashley has already won a Tony Award for Best Director, and it would surprise no one if he were to win at least one more someday.
He started directing theater in high school, studied English and math at Yale, and afterwards went to work at a bank.
I did systems analysis in foreign exchange, which I enjoyed for a while until I realized, oh, actually my job is to figure out how to shield people's money from tax liability. And I was like, that doesn't seem like a way to spend a life to me.
Ashley took an internship at an off-Broadway theater, and he won a National Endowment for the Arts grant for early career directors.
I was a freelance director for most of my 20s and 30s. It felt like dating audiences all the time. My interaction with them was two hours long, and then they would move on and I would move on. Part of why being artistic director for me was I didn't really want to date audiences. I wanted to have a relationship. I wanted to talk to them across six plays in a season.
That's a much richer, fuller conversation about the world than one play for two hours.
Just give me your – however you want to do it. Day in the life, general job description. Artistic director feels like you're wearing a different hat every 10 minutes. Can you just tell me what that job is?
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Chapter 7: What is the role of tech rehearsals in theater production?
Chapter 8: What are the future prospects for 'Three Summers of Lincoln'?
She's like, here's 30 people that we think would be fantastic to consider. So we all bat them around, champion various names until we winnow that list down to, I think we ended up with six people. And then you start figuring out, okay, who's actually available now. to come and join us in a month. And then what do you do? You send the script to all of those six?
No, no, no, you very much go one at a time. And most of those six, someone in our group has worked with before, and all of us have seen many, many performances by them. It's a very known group. You're not just basing this on an audition, you're also basing it on a body of work. And very, very excited that we're being joined by Ivan Hernandez as Lincoln. Tell me about Ivan.
For La Jolla Playhouse aficionados, he was the Zhivago in the La Jolla Playhouse production of Dr. Zhivago about 20 years ago. If you Google him, you'll see him all over film, all over television, and all over theater stages. He's stunning. Super smart, beautiful voice, has a kind of center of gravity that I think is a necessary part of Lincoln. Looks good in a top hat.
I have not tried him in a top hat yet, but I did draw one on a picture of him to sort of see what he looked like in my imagination. And what number was Ivan on that list? I can't tell you that, but he was high.
Coming up after the break.
Hi, I'm Ivan Hernandez, and I'm playing Abraham Lincoln in Three Summers of Lincoln.
I'm Stephen Dubner. This is Freakonomics Radio. We'll be right back. With Brian Stokes Mitchell out as Lincoln, Ivan Hernandez was in. After several weeks of rehearsal, the director Christopher Ashley declared himself pleased with the new casting.
He's got Lincolniness, which is a hard thing to define, but you know it when you see it. Can you describe it at least? What do you mean by Lincolniness? It's a gravitas. It's intelligent acting. use of language in rehearsals. I was like, yeah, he's really capturing something about Lincoln. And then we put the costume on and I thought, wow, he's really Lincoln.
And then we did a last thing, which is he'd been rehearsing with a beard and mustache. And we just shaved the mustache, which is unique to Lincoln, right? You don't see a lot of beards, no mustaches in the world. And there was something about like all of the work that he'd been done in creating the character suddenly with that tiny gesture got all the way across the finish line for me.
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