"Having Our Say" to be staged March 6 - 9 at Lincoln Presidential Museum

SPRINGFIELD - The critically-acclaimed book, Broadway hit and television movie, "Having Our Say: The Delany Sisters' First 100 Years," will be staged Thursday through Sunday, March 6 through 9 in the Union Theatre at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Museum in Springfield. Curtain times are 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Friday and Saturday, March 6 - 8 and 6:00 p.m. Sunday, March 9.

The production is sponsored by the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library Foundation. Tickets are $12 for adults and $5 for students 15 and under and go on sale February 4. For tickets, call the box office at (217) 558-8934 or reserve seats online at www.alplm.org

"Having Our Say" tells the story of two African-American sisters, Sadie and Bessie Delany, and traces their experiences from Reconstruction and the Jim Crow south to the Harlem Renaissance and the Civil Rights era. Both had successful careers in New York - Sadie was a school teacher and Bessie was a dentist. Sarah "Sadie" Delany died in January 1999 at the age of 109 years, and her sister Bessie died in 1995 at the age of 104.

The play by Emily Mann is adapted from the best-selling book the Delanys wrote with Amy Hill Hearth and is set in the Delanys' upstate New York living room as they reminisce about the often harrowing but always hopeful century they've lived. The book stayed on the New York Times Bestseller list for 22 weeks. The play was a hit on Broadway in 1995 and continues to be produced around the country.

Kathryn Harris and Patricia James-Davis portray the Delany sisters in the production. Ms Harris and Ms James-Davis first played these roles in 1999 at Lincoln's New Salem and also performed at the Hoogland Center for the Arts in 2005.

"Why this interest in the Delanys? Perhaps it's a reaction to the cynical contemporary world that spins out of control," said Phil Funkenbusch, who directs the Presidential Museum's production. "These daughters of a freed slave lived through two world wars, a worldwide depression, Hiroshima, and the march on Selma."