Southern Indiana Living SeptOct 2013

Big time history in a small town
Lincoln Amphitheatre takes its roots seriously and wants to share them with others
Story // Abby Laub
The Lincoln Amphitheatre has been providing arts
and culture, along with a serving of southern Indiana
history, to rural Lincoln City since 1987.
“Lincoln Amphitheatre also exposes the community
to President Lincoln’s Indiana boyhood years,” said
Brandi Weyer, communications director for the facility.
The 16th President of the United States spent many of his
formative years in the area.
“Lincoln walked on the very grounds the amphitheatre
sits. A quarter of his life was spent in Indiana, ages seven
to 21. It was where he received his less than a year of formal
education, studied by candlelight, worked on his family
farm, and sufered the losses of his beloved mother and
sister.”
“It’s interesting to think about how a boy that grew up
with humble beginnings became one of our nation’s most
regarded presidents,” she continued.
The theater’s humble beginnings are not unlike the famous
president’s.
The Lincoln Boyhood Drama Association was organized
in 1977 by the Lincoln Club of Southern Indiana. The association’s
vision was to create an outdoor drama in Spencer
County that would tell the story of Abraham Lincoln.
Eight busy years later the LBDA was allocated $3.2 million
by the Indiana Department of Natural Resources to construct
an amphitheatre in Lincoln State Park. It was constructed
in 1986 and 1987.
From 1987 until 2005, Billy Edd Wheeler’s “Young Abe Lincoln”
was staged at Lincoln Amphitheatre every summer. “It
was a fun, energetic musical about President Lincoln’s Indiana
September/October 2013 • 26