KENT, Conn.—As Kent prepares to celebrate the semiquincentennial with a series of festivities on July 3 and 4, it is already receiving distinguished visitors.
“John Adams,” America’s second president and one of the most effective goads to the Continental Congress in its tortuous movement toward independence, visited Kent Memorial Library June 4, offering a lively program that recounted his distinguished career.
John was interpreted by George Baker, a New Canaan-based re-enactor who imbued the the thin-skinned, peppery Adams with a levity the Founding Father never evinced in life.
The serious-minded Adams was a key player in the Continental Congress and edited the Declaration of Independence with Benjamin Franklin. He served as the Colonies’ ambassador to France during the Revolutionary War, won vitally needed loans from European powers and helped negotiate the peace treaty with England. As President, his cool head kept the fledgling United States from going to war with France.
“My father was a lowly farmer from Braintree, Mass,” Baker, in character, told his audience. “When I was 16, he sold several acres of land so I could attend the local community college called—Harvard. He wanted me to become a minister, as most of my colleagues did, but I wanted to be a lawyer, a profession considered to be several tiers below that of a minister—even then,” he quipped.
He recounted that that he and his father argued about his career choice and finally compromised. If he would be a teacher in Worcester, Mass., for two years, he could then study law. “After I was in Worcester two years, very much to father’s disappointment, I started reading law and finally set up a law office at own home in Braintree. As my practice grew, I moved it to Boston, which was a busy city of about 15,000. Today it has about 15,000 lawyers,” he said.
Baker said in an interview following his presentation, that he is sometimes chided by re-enactors for portraying Adams as a humorous and witty man. “I’m funny, but certain people will come up after the performance and say, ‘John Adams wasn’t funny.’ I reply, ‘Didn’t you see that everyone was laughing?’ Historical re-enactors, they just talk about facts—there is nothing funny, nothing warm. What a fun time we [my audiences and I] have—I always ignore my critics.”
Baker has portrayed Adams about 450 times since he unveiled his act in 2008. He has performed for audiences from Fort Kent, Maine, to Virginia. A Columbia University-trained lawyer, he said that he decided while in school that he did not want to work 80-hour weeks at law.
“I didn’t want that crazy kind of life,” he recounted. “I wanted a real life. I was in theater programs and fell in love with it. I can sing very well and I would get a part in a musical and do all that work and then after 10 performances, it was over. It had an emotional effect on me. But to carry it on, I would have had to find 45 people who wanted to do it with me. I thought, ‘I have to find a one-man show.’”
Inspired by Hal Holbrook’s Mark Twain impersonation, he thought about historical characters such as Winston Churchill, but was surprised to find that Church still has live copyrights. Then his wife, who was reading David McCullough’s biography of John Adams, said, “You could be John Adams.”
“I read the book and thought, ‘Wow, so many facets in his life are like mine.’ For six months I did nothing but read all about John Adams.”
He had the information in his head, but a program refused to materialize. “I had to come up with a speech but it just wouldn’t come,” he said. Finally, his wife advised him to call on his experience at writing humorous programs for the Gridiron Club in New Canaan.
“I had been writing scenes for the Gridiron Club for years and found I could really write comedy. My wife said, ‘Why don’t you pretend you’re writing John Adams for the Gridiron Club.’ I thought of a scene where John Adams and Thomas Jefferson are having a conversation and I just wrote the dialogue. It just flowed.”
With his program worked out, he perfected it by presenting it to Rotary Clubs in three states, judging what worked and what did not. Quite by chance, he got his first paying gig and his career as a presenter was off and running.
For the past 18 years he has taken his show on the road anywhere from two to five times a month. With the 250th anniversary in full sway, that schedule has increased to two to five times a week.
“The good thing is that it is extending out through the whole year,” he said. “It isn’t just ending in July. We have so much fun and people are so eager. It’s a great time.”
