YOU CAN SEE ‘INVENTING’ NOW

Sam Goodyear Featured

In July 4 PBS’ TV Special

“Inventing America: Conversations with the Founders,” featuring Sam Goodyear, formerly of Cooperstown and Oneonta, as John Adams, will air at 5:30 p.m. July 3 – this Sunday – on WSKG, the Binghamton public television station.

“Making a Nation” – as this first segment is called – is about 60 minutes long, runs as an interview with three of the Declaration’s signers—Thomas Jefferson ( Bill Barker) and Benjamin Franklin (John Hamant), as well as Adams, all actors with Colonial Williamsburg —and one delegate to the Second Continental Congress, John Dickinson, who refused to sign, revealing the conflict behind the historic event.

While imagined and presented as a retrospective, the conversation is based on fact, using the Founders’ actual words.  The moderator is Dr. Marc Baer, a member of the history department at Hope College, Holland, Mich., where the segment was filmed before a live audience.

Created by Holland resident Milton Nieuwsma, a two-time Emmy Award winner, the program was developed as a joint project of Hope College and WGVU Public Media.   Dickinson was portrayed by actor Rodney TeSlaa of the Greater Grand Rapids area.  Executive producer was Darell Schregardus of Davis, California, and the director was emeritus theatre faculty member John K.V. Tammi.  Both Nieuwsma and Schregardus are 1963 Hope graduates.

“Inventing America: Conversations with the Founders” was filmed as a pilot for a potential limited-run PBS series focused on the story of the American republic, with the format modeled after Steve Allen’s classic “Meeting of Minds” series, which aired on PBS from 1977 to 1981.  An early cut was shown at the Knickerbocker Theatre and on WGVU last July.  A second episode will be filmed on campus in December, and a third potentially in March.