Chautauqua has postponed the rest of the 2020 Season including the June Festival. The “Reinventing America Festival” will be held June 11 – 20, 2021. All of our incredible performers have agreed to return. So yes, you will be able to meet and ask questions of Ben Franklin, Thomas Edison, Nikola Tesla, Hedy Lamarr and Rosa Parks.

Little did we know when Chautauqua chose the theme of Reinventing America, that at this time we would be literally holed up in our homes or valiantly battling an invisible foe in our hospitals. We have had our lives turned upside down. Yet we are coming up with amazing ways to cope with this disaster. This is what Americans do. We improvise, adapt, adjust, find ways to live through. We reinvent ourselves. As the Covid-19 virus challenges our American ingenuity and perseverance, more then ever we will need Ben Franklin’s “science and reason,” Thomas Edison’s “perspiration,” Nikola Tesla’s “inspiration,” Hedy Lamarr’s “ceiling crashing,” and Rosa Parks’s “grit.” And come next June at the History Comes Alive Festival, we’ll have our own stories of Reinventing America to share.