Our deep gratitude to the media for all of the coverage of the upcoming premiere of Sons & Daughters of Thunder and the nearly forgotten true story of the 1834 Cincinnati, Ohio Lane Theological Seminary anti-slavery debates--the first to publicly discuss the end of slavery in America.
Our Saturday, March 16 6:30PM premiere event at the Putnam Giant Screen sold out after the story by Entertainment editor Jonathan Turner ran in the Dispatch/Argus and the Quad City Times. He was quick to put out the word that a Sunday, March 17, 3PM Encore Screening was added by the Putnam Museum (advance tickets at Putnam.org/calendar).
Jonathan's interview with Tom Taylor (Theodore Weld in the film) and Jess Taylor, who portrays a young 23-year-old Harriet Beecher, touched on what playing the parts of historic 'heroes' meant to them and captured the interest of the reader:
“I felt such a sense of responsibility to portray her,” Jessica Taylor said Thursday, noting they filmed in 2014 at the Harriet Beecher Stowe House in Cincinnati, the only remaining building from the seminary grounds, where Harriet's father, Lyman Beecher, was president.
“There was such weight to what we were doing,” she said. “To be in the place where it actually happened — I was in awe of it. She's funny; she wrote satire. She was breaking some rules as a woman at that time.”
Tom Taylor said it was an honor to play a figure that “had that kind of influence, shapes the world around them, to spend time digging into his work, dangers that he faced. He was quite an exciting character.
"It's easy for him to get overlooked because it was the beginning of and not the end of it,” he said.
Jonathan Turner has covered Sons & Daughters of Thunder's progress over the years, from inception to completion, and we are so VERY grateful to him for his excellent, in-depth and accurate coverage of our work! Read the rest of Jonathan Turner's story HERE!
Thank you to the River Cities Reader for the wonderful preview on Thunder! Check it out HERE!
Our first radio interview was a blast! Thanks to Tazz Hines and WQUD-FM 107.7 for having us on the show to talk "Thunder"! Tazz appears in the film as a Lane Rebel extra! Listen to the one-hour chat HERE!
Thanks to Radio Iowa's Matt Kelley for doing an interview with director Kelly Rundle about the project. The piece aired on 70 radio stations throughout Iowa.
A big thank you to Talk of Iowa's host Charity Nebbe and Iowa Public Radio for having us on along with Chris DeSimio, historian and former president of the Harriet Beecher Stowe House in Cincinnati. It was an excellent program and you can here the 30-minute discussion HERE!
We are always so grateful to be on Paula Sands Live! to talk to Paula about our work. She is always very kind to us and it was great fun to share Thunder with her and KWQC-TV6 viewers. We also got a chance to show off Emily Busha's work--she was the project's fabulous costume designer! View the PSL segment HERE!
Our gratitude to Mike Mickle, Terry Fillmer and WHBF-TV4 for having director/editor Kelly Rundle on the 4pm news to talk about Thunder and the many local stars involved in the film project and the historic sites featured in the docudrama. You can see the 5-minute spot HERE!
And finally our thanks to Lora Adams for always programming our 'stuff' on WQPT, and kindly promoting our events on Out and About! A special thanks to Jim Mertens and "The Cities" for having us on from time to time and helping us make our local audience aware of our work. We are forever grateful to our local PBS station, WQPT-QC PBS!
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Did you know...
Sons & Daughters of Thunder is based on the critically-acclaimed play by Earlene Hawley and Curtis Heeter.
It tells the true story of the 1834 Cincinnati, Ohio Lane Theological Seminary anti-slavery debates. The controversial meetings, led by abolitionist and firebrand Theodore Weld (played by acclaimed stage actor Thomas Alan Taylor), were the first to publicly discuss the end of slavery in America. The meetings angered Cincinnati residents and Lane Seminary officials, who promptly slapped a gag order on the entire student body. This action was followed by a freedom of speech protest and mass exodus of Lane students to Oberlin College. A young Harriet Beecher’s (played by acclaimed stage actress Jess Denney) exposure to the debates and Weld's continuing work to free the slaves sparked a flame that led her to write her magnum opus Uncle Tom's Cabin.
Sons & Daughters of Thunder is co-produced by Kent Hawley, and by Fourth Wall Films, owned by Emmy® nominated filmmakers Kelly and Tammy Rundle, a film and video production company specializing in historical documentaries for public television broadcast and DVD home video.
The fiscal sponsors for the film project are The Shell Rock Historical Society, and The Moline Foundation. If you are interested in contributing to the film project and receiving screen credit, please click here: SUPPORT THUNDER!
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