The lives of American Presidents have long inspired the imaginations of writers and artists. It seems that every years brings a new must-read biography or a controversial new drama on film or television. Off-Broadway theatre also often gets into the act with docu-dramas, one-man shows, satirical musicals and more. In honor of Independence Day, we’ve compiled a list of some of our favorite Off-Broadway plays and musicals that created theatrical fireworks by using U.S. Presidents as major characters.

ABE LINCOLN IN ILLINOIS
Winner of the 1939 Pulitzer Prize upon its Broadway premiere, this drama by Robert E. Sherwood received its first New York revival in a 1963 Off-Broadway production. Hal Holbrook starred as Lincoln, with his wife Ruby as love interest Elizabeth Edwards, and his son David as Lincoln’s son, Tad. The original production featured a cast of 49, but the show was scaled-down a bit for Off-Broadway: the cast numbered “only” 31. Incidentally, Holbrook later won an Emmy Award for playing the same role in an otherwise unrelated television mini-series based on a Carl Sandburg biography.

ANNIE WARBUCKS
Given the monstrous success of the 1977 Broadway hit musical Annie, in which a plucky Depression-era orphan sings “Tomorrow,” which inspires Franklin Delano Roosevelt to create The New Deal, a follow-up seemed inevitable. Annie 2: Miss Hannigan’s Revenge premiered at the Kennedy Center in 1989 to disastrous reviews, and after extensive retooling (eventually entailing an entirely new script and score), Annie Warbucks opened at the Variety Arts Theatre in 1993 and played 200 performances. Picking up where the original musical left off, FDR makes another appearance (played, as in the original, by Raymond Thorne), and is again inspired by the red-headed orphan – this time, to establish the Tennessee Valley Authority.

ASSASSINS
The dark underbelly of the American dream is the subject of this Stephen Sondheim-John Weidman musical that premiered at Playwrights Horizons in December 1990. The revue-like plot features vignettes and songs sung by successful and would-be presidential assassins, from John Wilkes Booth (killer of Lincoln) to John Hinckley (attempted to murder Reagan). In the show’s chilling penultimate scene (preserved in its entirely on the original cast recording), the assassins gather at the Texas School Book Depository to encourage Lee Harvey Oswald to shoot Kennedy and to join their legacy. A 2001 Broadway revival was scuttled in light of 9/11, but the show did finally see the light of day again in an award-winning 2004 Broadway debut (which incorporated a new song, “Something Just Broke,” penned for the 1992 London production).

Benjamin Walker and the cast of BLOODY BLOODY ANDREW JACKSON. Photo by Joan Marcus.

BLOODY, BLOODY ANDREW JACKSON
The newest show on our list, this spring 2010 musical pours Old Hickory into tight black jeans, applies a liberal does of black eyeliner and re-imagines him as red-hot star in an adolescent America. With a pulsing emo rock score, The New York Times called it “the most entertaining and most perceptive political theater of the season.” The show, which extended three times at the Public Theater and has been recorded for release later this year on Sh-K-Boom Records, picked up the 2010 Outer Critics Circle Award for Outstanding New Off-Broadway Musical, and the rumor mill is that Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson may transfer to Broadway during the 2010-2011 season.

MR. PRESIDENT
In 2001, Gerard Alessandrini, the wunderkind behind Forbidden Broadway, turned his attention to a revised version of Mr. President, a late-career misfire for lauded songwriter Irving Berlin, and his final Broadway musical. Alessandrini’s musical spoof uses Berlin’s songs (with tweaked lyrics) to spoof the 2000 Presidential campaign with character like George Shrub Jr., Dick Brainy, Will and Chillary Fenton and Al Bore.

Gerry Bannman as Nixon and Steve Mellor as Kissinger in NIXON'S NIXON. Photo by Joan Marcus.

NIXON’S NIXON
This two-actor play by Russell Lees imagines a drunken late-night conversation between Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and Richard Nixon on the eve of the President’s resignation in August 1974. A big hit for MCC Theater in the 1995-1996 season, the show’s popularity demanded that it transfer to the Westside Theatre for a commercial engagement in March 1996. The show received a tenth anniversary production featuring the original cast, Gerry Bannman as Nixon and Steve Mellor as Kissinger, in October 2006, predating the similarly themed Broadway production of Frost/Nixon by several months.

STUFF HAPPENS
A rare instance of a sitting President being depicted onstage, this drama features George W. Bush as a major character. British playwright David Hare’s play depicts the events leading up to the 2003 Iraq war, mixing verbatim re-creations of actual speeches and press conferences (by Bush, Tony Blair, Colin Powell and more), with imagined behind-the-scenes machinations. The play premiered in London in 2004, opened in Los Angeles in 2005, and finally arrived at the Public Theater in New York in 2006, with updates along the way as real-world headlines demanded.

WITH LOVE AND LAUGHTER
Celeste Holm starred with her husband, Wesley Addy, in this short-lived 1982 self-described “collage” about men and women. With Love and Laughter drew material from a variety of sources, from Shakespeare and Shaw to Rodgers & Hammerstein to letters sent to and from Abigail Adams and the second President of the United States, John Adams.

THE YOUNG ABE LINCOLN
A charming musical biography of 16th president’s early days intended for young audiences, The Young Abe Lincoln bowed at the York Playhouse at 64th Street and 1st Avenue (not to be confused with the York Theatre at St. Peter’s at Lexington and 53rd Street) on April 3, 1961, and quickly transferred to Broadway’s Eugene O’Neill Theatre where it opened on April 25 and closed 27 performances later. The show returned to the York Playhouse for another 62 performances. That fall, the director of the show, Jay Harnick (brother of Fiddler on the Roof lyricist Sheldon Harnick), made plans for the show to tour educational facilities. Nearly fifty years later, this touring company still exists: Theatreworks USA now reaches over three million children across the country every year, and the company will present the new musical We the People: America Rocks! Off-Broadway at the Lortel Theatre later this month.