A vote to cast

Nov. 10—In 1824, John Quincy Adams became the first person elected president despite losing the popular vote, and a bitter Andrew Jackson refused to acknowledge Adams' victory.

In the election four years later, Jackson clobbered Adams, winning 55.5 percent of the popular vote to Adams' 44 percent and carrying 15 out of 24 states. Adams' name recognition and long history in government weren't enough to keep him in office.

"The fact that [Jackson] won the next election in a landslide is a scary possible prophecy about what's going to happen next year," New Mexico Actors Lab founder and managing director Robert "Beny" Benedetti says about the 2024 presidential election. "Jackson was a populist who leaned pretty far to the right and pretty far toward authoritarianism. The whole situation is so similar to Biden-Trump that one can only pray that the outcome is not the same."

If Benedetti has a regret about the lab's staging of JQA, a two-act play that draws parallels between current and past politics via a series of conversations involving the sixth president, it's that the election is still a year away. At the same time, he's happy to delve into the subject "while there is still time to rally support."

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JQA

7:30 p.m. Wednesday, November 15, through November 18, November 22, November 24-25, November 30-December 2; 2 p.m. November 19, November 26, and December 3

New Mexico Actors Lab, 1213-B Parkway Drive

$15 to $35

505-395-6576; nmactorslab.com

Each of the five actors in JQA — Scott Harrison, Kent Kirkpatrick, Danielle Reddick, Alexander Lane, and Benedetti — plays three characters. The actors portray Adams at different stages of his life, with Benedetti playing him as an older man in the 1840s. The other characters include Jackson, George Washington, John Adams (John Quincy's father), Louisa Adams (his wife), Abigail Adams (his mother), Abraham Lincoln, James Madison, Frederick Douglass, and three-time presidential candidate Henry Clay.

"Despite the obstacles that are placed in front of him, his biggest defeat is at the hands of Andrew Jackson," Benedetti says. "John Quincy Adams had been the secretary of state previously, under James Monroe, and the secretary of state had traditionally been the heir apparent to the presidency. Jackson got the most popular votes, John Quincy came in second, and Henry Clay came in third. But none of them won a majority in the Electoral College, which existed from very early on and has been [screwing] up elections ever since."

The 1824 election was the first of five in U.S. history decided by the Electoral College and not the popular vote. Two of the others occurred this century, sending George W. Bush and then Donald Trump to the White House. The two other instances occurred a dozen years apart. In 1876, Samuel J. Tilden lost to Rutherford B. Hayes, despite receiving 50.9 percent of the popular vote. In 1888, Grover Cleveland lost to Benjamin Harrison despite winning 48.6 percent of the popular vote to Harrison's 47.8 percent.

Unlike Trump, who lost the popular vote in 2016 and again in 2020, Jackson had legitimate reasons to feel the presidency had been stolen from him. Because neither Jackson nor Adams had received a majority of Electoral College votes, the election was decided by the House of Representatives. There, Adams' long friendship with House speaker Henry Clay landed him the support he needed to become president despite losing the popular vote to Jackson, 113,122 to 151,271, or 30.9 percent to 41.3 percent (other candidates also received votes).

Jackson called it a shameful, corrupt bargain.

"He fought against it tooth and nail, and that's why John Quincy didn't accomplish very much during his first and only term," Benedetti says. "He wanted to do things like create a national university, create a national observatory, move us onto the metric system. It was a very enlightened presidency that favored science and the arts, and Andrew Jackson was opposed to all of that. By mobilizing his influence in Congress, he blocked everything that John Quincy Adams tried to do and, in 1828, he won in a landslide because of the preparation that he had done. That so perfectly mirrors the situation with Trump and Biden."

Kirkpatrick, who occasionally directs plays for the Actors Lab, says JQA provides a good history lesson, in addition to a reminder that history echoes.

"In my first scene, I play John Adams, and John Quincy is 9 years old," he says. "It's fun to play a stern father with a misbehaving 9-year-old. Then it goes to John Quincy Adams after he's president, railing against the next president, who was Andrew Jackson."

Kirkpatrick recalls a college exercise in which multiple actors played the same role, studying others' performances when it wasn't their turn.

"The training was to watch the other person and see what they were doing well, and they were watching you and seeing what you were doing well," he says. "So you were building this together. With JQA, we've talked about what the through line is in the character, and now each of us wants to bring that to the scenes when we play him."

Lane, who shared the title role with Geoffrey Pomeroy in Incite Shakespeare Company Santa Fe's summer production of Richard III, likens watching other actors play the same character to researching a role.

"So Scott Harrison plays JQA in the first scene at the tender age of 9, and then I pick [the role] up and am a twentysomething, talking to this guy named George Washington," he says. "Part of my preparation for that scene is watching Scott and his mannerisms, his nuances. That's a guide for me."

Benedetti portrays John Quincy toward the end of his life and calls it a privilege to try to incorporate what others have brought to the role. He adds that he has been satisfied with the way the five actors have shared the duty.

"That's a question that I had to face early on as a director: Did I want this to be one character played by five actors? And is that the primary concern?" he says. "Can we allow each actor to bring some quality to the rather complex personality of the character of John Quincy Adams? That's pretty much the path that I've taken."

Lane and Kirkpatrick appreciate the challenge of portraying a character most audience members are unfamiliar with. Anthony Hopkins portrayed an older John Quincy in the 1997 film Amistad, and Ebon Moss Bachrach (The Bear) played him as a boy in the 2008 HBO miniseries John Adams, but he's not a familiar figure on stage or screen.

"I found myself pondering, 'Why did [playwright] Aaron Posner pick John Quincy Adams?'" Lane says. "It's not a biographical play, per se. It's more of an idea play about government, about asking questions. I feel like I've already learned [tons] about American history, doing this play. I cannot think of a single play that is more relevant to the times we're living in than this one."

A test of character

New Mexico has the third-highest percentage of Indigenous residents of any U.S. state, trailing only Alaska and Oklahoma. While the colonial era is a source of pride for many Americans, some in New Mexico might not be enthusiastic about celebrating it.

"What [the founding fathers] did is pretty without precedent, and America is a place that people from all over the world want to come to," Lane says. "But I cannot shake the fact that it was built on genocide and slavery. Indigenous people were so respectful to the land, and here we are, mere hundreds of years later, just starting to suffer the wrath of climate change, so I definitely struggle with that. I think the play does a good job not being a propaganda piece. We're not saying the Pledge of Allegiance at the end."

Pull Quote

At the same time, he appreciates the founding fathers' dogged determination.

"The grit of these people, what they were able to accomplish in mind and body, that's what's really powerful for me," Lane says. "They fought wars and wrote the Bill of Rights. What's the precedent for that in 2023?"

Although John Adams isn't among the best-known founding fathers, Benedetti says, he was the only one who never owned slaves. The Adamses also were the only early presidential family not to bring slaves to the White House. Those sensibilities stuck with John Quincy.

"He hated slavery passionately," Benedetti says. "He took on the Amistad case, which Steven Spielberg made a movie about; there was a whole shipload of slaves, and he fought for and won their freedom. And he spoke regularly against slavery when he was in the House of Representatives for nine terms."

At the same time, John Quincy avoided publicly championing the abolishment of slavery for decades because he didn't think the country could survive it.

"The next-to-the-last scene is him meeting with Frederick Douglass right after the publication of the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, which was a bestselling book at the time," Benedetti says. "Douglass pretty well convinces him that he has to come out as an abolitionist, because he is now the elder statesman in the nation. He is the last link to the original founding fathers, all of whom have died. John Quincy says he has known every president and every man of influence from the time the nation was born.

"John Quincy didn't [embrace abolition] publicly. The last scene of the play is him meeting with a young Abraham Lincoln, who is new to the House of Representatives. Lincoln has made a speech on the floor against slavery, and against the divisions in the country between the slave states and the non-slave states. John Quincy summons him after hearing that speech and encourages him to do whatever it takes to end slavery."