Obama on my Mind is a musical play about the 2008 presidential campaign of Barack Obama by British crime writer and film producer Teddy Hayes.
The play, a musical comedy, is a campaign story set the week after the 2008 Republican National Convention. [1] [2]
Reviews were strongly negative. Lyn Gardner, a British reviewer wrote a critical review in The Guardian after having seen the show at the Hen and Chickens Theatre where the musical made its debut to mostly sold-out crowds, describing the musical as "opportunistic", and as a "bizarrely unfocused text - an apparently unedited stream of consciousness". [3]
However one year later the play was taken to Seattle Washington and staged at the Langston Hughes Theater where it was positively reviewed, championed and supported by African American audiences as a piece of entertainment that reflected both the humour as well as all of the events surrounding the jaw dropping surprise of an African American being elected as US president. The Broadway World described the play as a "politically inspired comedic romp featuring a motley crew of loyal, obsessive and downright peculiar personalities, striving to get their candidate into the White House."
The 2008 United States presidential election was the 56th quadrennial presidential election, held on Tuesday, November 4, 2008. The Democratic ticket of Barack Obama, the junior U.S. Senator from Illinois, and Joe Biden, the senior U.S. Senator from Delaware, defeated the Republican ticket of John McCain, the senior Senator from Arizona, and Sarah Palin, the Governor of Alaska. Obama became the first African American ever to be elected to the presidency, as well as being only the third sitting United States Senator elected president, joining Warren G. Harding and John F. Kennedy.
Barack Hussein Obama II is an American politician and attorney who served as the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, Obama was the first African-American president of the United States. He previously served as a U.S. senator from Illinois from 2005 to 2008 and an Illinois state senator from 1997 to 2004.
Michelle LaVaughn Robinson Obama is an American attorney and author who was the First Lady of the United States from 2009 to 2017. She is married to the 44th president of the United States, Barack Obama, and was the first African-American First Lady.
Maxine Peake is an English actress. She appeared as Twinkle in Dinnerladies and Veronica Ball in Shameless, barrister Martha Costello in the BBC legal drama Silk, and Grace Middleton in the BBC drama series The Village, and starred in the Black Mirror episode "Metalhead". She has also played the title role in Hamlet.
Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance (1995) is a memoir by Barack Obama, that explores the events of his early years in Honolulu and Chicago up until his entry into law school in 1988. Obama originally published his memoir in 1995, when he was starting his political campaign for the Illinois Senate. He had been elected as the first African-American president of the Harvard Law Review in 1990. According to The New York Times, Obama modeled Dreams from My Father on Ralph Ellison's novel Invisible Man.
Ursula Martinez is a British theatre maker, performer and director. She grew up in South London, the daughter of an English father and Spanish mother, both teachers.
Jack Mapanje is a Malawian writer and poet. He was the head of English at the Chancellor College, the main campus of the University of Malawi before being imprisoned in 1987 for his collection Of Chameleons and Gods, which indirectly criticized the administration of President Hastings Banda. He was released in 1991 and emigrated to the UK, where he worked as a teacher.
Barack Hussein Obama Sr. was a Kenyan senior governmental economist and the father of Barack Obama, the 44th president of the United States. He is a central figure of his son's memoir, Dreams from My Father (1995). Obama married in 1954 and had two children with his first wife, Kezia. He was selected for a special program to attend college in the United States and studied at the University of Hawaii where he met Stanley Ann Dunham, whom he married in 1961. They had a son, Barack II. Dunham divorced Obama three years later. The elder Obama later went to Harvard University for graduate school, where he earned an M.A. in economics, and returned to Kenya in 1964. He saw his son Barack once more, when he was about 10.
Madelyn Lee Payne Dunham was the American maternal grandmother of Barack Obama, the 44th President of the United States. She and her husband Stanley Armour Dunham raised Obama from age ten in their Honolulu apartment, where on November 2, 2008, she died two days before her grandson was elected President.
Jonathan Edward Favreau is an American political commentator, podcaster, and the former Director of Speechwriting for President Barack Obama.
The Apathists were a collective of British playwrights who staged plays and happenings in London between March 2006 and March 2007. The events generated a cult following on the London theatre scene. The collective had a festival of their work at the Union Theatre produced by David Luff and were involved in the 2006 Latitude Festival, but their work mainly centred on monthly nights at Theatre503, formerly the Latchmere Theatre.
The family of Barack Obama, the 44th president of the United States, and his wife Michelle Obama is made up of people of Kenyan (Luo), African-American, and Old Stock American ancestry. Their immediate family was the first family of the United States from 2009 to 2017. The Obamas are the first such family of African-American descent.
Barack Obama, who was elected as the 44th President of the United States, has elicited a number of public perceptions regarding his personality and background. As the first African-American President of the United States, his race and culture played a prominent role, both positively and negatively. His relative youth has alternately resulted in his being praised for his freshness and criticized for his inexperience. His temperament and demeanor have been praised for perceived unflappability, but criticized for a perception of lacking emotional attachment.
Oprah Winfrey's endorsement of Barack Obama was one of the most widely covered and studied developments of the 2008 presidential campaign, as she has been described as the most influential woman in the world. Winfrey first endorsed Obama in September 2006 before he had even declared himself a candidate. In May 2007 Winfrey made her official endorsement of candidate Obama, and in December 2007, she made her first campaign appearances for him. Two economists estimate that Winfrey's endorsement was worth over a million votes in the Democratic primary race and that without it, Obama would have received fewer votes. Then-Governor of Illinois Rod Blagojevich claimed that the endorsement was so significant in electing Obama president that he considered offering Obama's former seat in the Senate to Winfrey.
During Barack Obama's campaign for president in 2008, throughout his presidency, and afterwards, "there was extensive news coverage of Obama's religious preference, birthplace, and of the individuals questioning his religious belief and citizenship—efforts eventually known as the 'birther movement'", by which name it is widely referred to across media. The movement falsely asserted Obama was ineligible to be President of the United States because he was not a natural-born citizen of the U.S. as required by Article Two of the Constitution. Birther conspiracy theories were predominantly held by conservatives and Republicans, as well as individuals with anti-black attitudes.
Gina Beck is an English actress and singer, who is known primarily for playing major roles in West End musical theatre productions. She played the roles of Miss Honey in the RSC's production of Matilda, Magnolia Hawks in Daniel Evans' acclaimed production of Show Boat, Glinda the Good Witch in Wicked, both in the London production and the 1st U.S. tour, Christine Daaé in Cameron Mackintosh's production of Andrew Lloyd Webber's The Phantom of the Opera and Cosette in Les Miserables.
Before and after the election of Barack Obama as the first African American President of the United States in 2008, the idea of a black president has been explored by various writers in novels, movies and television, as well as other media. Numerous actors have portrayed a black president. Such portrayals have occurred in both serious works and comedies.
Shakespeare at the Tobacco Factory is a professional theatre company based at the Tobacco Factory in Bristol, England. It was founded by Andrew Hilton in 1999, with the initial aim of producing two Shakespeare plays between mid February and May each year. The plan was to operate without subsidy, seeking instead sponsorship and using an ensemble of actors recruited or each season. Hilton, an established actor, had spent ten years teaching the craft of Shakespearean theatre at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School.
Jack Shalloo is an English actor and singer, known for his role as Lewis in Our House, Hamlet in Hamlet The Musical and Pete in Departure Lounge. As a singer, Shalloo released the album London Soul in 2011.
Lyn Gardner is a British theatre critic, children's writer and journalist who contributes reviews and articles to The Stage and has written for The Guardian.