Actor Mike Schulz cast as Asa Mahan.
Acclaimed Quad City actor Mike Schulz has been cast in the role of Asa Mahan in the new docudrama Sons & Daughters of Thunder.
Produced by Emmy® nominated documentary filmmakers Kelly & Tammy Rundle, and Kent Hawley (Lane Rebels, Ltd.), Sons & Daughters of Thunder is based on the award-winning play by Earlene Hawley and Curtis Heeter, and tells the unforgettable true story of the beginning of the end of slavery in America.
"We have long had our eye on Mike Schulz for this project, as he is such an exceptional actor. His audition as Asa Mahan was exactly what we were looking for," director Kelly Rundle said. "We are very excited to have Mike involved in Sons & Daughters of Thunder and we look forward to his interpretation and portrayal of Mahan, a significant figure in the Lane Rebels' story."
A native of Crystal Lake, Illinois, Mike Schulz has enjoyed extensive stage experience over the years, performing in more than 40 plays and musicals since 1995. Among his theatre credits are productions of RED (Mark Rothko), How I Learned to Drive (Uncle Peck), Speed-the-Plow (Bobby Gould), Hedda Gabler (George Tesman), 'Art' (Serge), Cyrano de Bergerac (Comte de Guiche), Time Stands Still (Richard), Fool for Love (Martin), The Rover (Ned Blunt), Joseph & the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat (Napthali), and The Nutcracker (Drosselmeyer). Schulz serves as the Arts Editor for Davenport, Iowa's independent newspaper the River Cities' Reader, and although Sons & Daughters of Thunder marks his first appearance in a feature film, it's not the first film he's seen – Schulz has been the paper's resident movie reviewer for more than 18 years.
Asa Mahan, a Presbyterian minister, served as a member of the Board of Trustees at Lane Seminary in Cincinnati, Ohio during the antislavery Lane debates in 1834. When a number of seminary students favored immediate emancipation and condemned the efforts of colonization, the Lane trustees and faculty prohibited all further antislavery discussion. A large majority of the students, known thereafter as the "Lane Rebels", left the seminary for Oberlin Collegiate Institute in Oberlin, Ohio. Asa Mahan was the lone dissenter among the Lane trustees and was asked to become Oberlin’s first president. Mahan agreed, so long as Oberlin guaranteed freedom of speech and a promise to admit African Americans as students to the institution.
Major production for Sons & Daughters of Thunder begins in December and will run through May of 2014. Production will take place in Illinois, Iowa, Ohio and Connecticut. The film is slated for release in 2017.
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