Walt Whitman’s American Dream, a new play by Sarah Vander Schaaff, will enjoy a staged reading in Special Collections & Archives on Thursday, September 10, at 4:30 p.m. The event will also feature an exhibit of 19th-century Whitman editions, including an autographed 1855 first edition of Leaves of Grass, from the ZSR Rare Books Collection.

Running time is 90 minutes, and light refreshments will be available. Doors open at 4:00 pm. The reading is FREE and open to the public. For more information, contact archives@wfu.edu

The cast reading of Walt Whitman’s American Dream is directed by Dr. Cindy Gendrich and features faculty members from the Wake Forest Department of Theatre & Dance.

The reading of this lively biopic is part of Special Collections & Archives’ programming for the 2026 Semiquincentennial year. We are especially pleased to stage this play in the SCA space, surrounded by artifacts of the American Revolution in our current exhibit, Reading the Revolution: Print Culture in 18th Century America . Walt Whitman’s life and work tell the next chapter in the history of American print culture: in the century following the Revolution, Whitman wrote poetry that grappled with both the great promise and the daunting challenges facing the new nation, and he drew on his experience as a printer in using creative book design and marketing to capture the interest of his readers.

Playwright Sarah Maraniss Vander Schaaff began her creative career as a child when she hung a curtain in the garage and made a stage. Since then, she has explored storytelling as a playwright, journalist, blogger, and performer. She has a particular interest in telling stories inspired by history and real events. Her play Apartment 3F was selected for Centenary Stage Company’s Women Playwrights Series and finalist in the Susan Glaspell play competition. Sustain Me, a two-person comedy probing the broken promises of kale and yoga, was performed at the Ground and Field Festival in Davis, California. As a journalist, her writing has appeared in The Washington Post and The New York Times, among other outlets. She lives in Maine and is the parent of a current Wake Forest student.