By Grace Hatchell
What happens when the thing that has defined your entire life suddenly disappears?
For Kaely Michels-Gualtieri, that was not a theoretical question posed during a particularly intense creative-writing workshop. It became her reality when a series of life-threatening injuries brought her career as an elite solo swinging trapeze artist to an abrupt end.
After more than a decade performing up to forty feet in the air with Cirque du Soleil and Ringling Bros., Kaely found herself permanently grounded.
Most of us would consider getting through a Wednesday without losing our keys a successful reinvention. Kaely became a Cambridge-educated historian and playwright.
Her first Edinburgh Festival Fringe musical, 1 Night at Ford’s Theatre, will receive its world premiere at the Bubble at Rotunda Theatre from 7 to 23 August 2026.
With an original score by Chi Wai Hu and lyrics by Hu and Sabrina Steuer, the production explores the relationship between two brothers whose lives became inseparable from one of the most notorious events in American history.
John Wilkes Booth is remembered as the man who assassinated President Abraham Lincoln. His older brother, Edwin Booth, was one of the most celebrated actors in America.
One became infamous.
The other had to work out whether it was possible to step back onto a stage while carrying the weight of his brother’s crime.
Framed as a “circus of memory” and hosted by showman P.T. Barnum, the musical traces the Booth brothers from their shared childhood towards the radically different roles history eventually assigned them.
It is a theatrical idea with several moving parts: family rivalry, political violence, celebrity, Shakespeare and P.T. Barnum overseeing proceedings like history’s most ambitious ringmaster.
Yet it was Edwin Booth’s story after the assassination that particularly captured Kaely’s attention.
Just nine months after Lincoln’s death, Edwin returned to the stage to play Hamlet.
That return raised a question Kaely understood personally: who do you become when the role that once defined you no longer fits?
“After my injury, I wasn’t asking where I’d perform next, I was asking who I was if I could no longer do what had defined my life,” she said.
“Losing trapeze meant losing the language I’d always used to tell stories. When performing was no longer possible, I found myself asking if the thing you’ve devoted your life to disappears, who are you afterwards?”
Kaely’s own answer was not to abandon storytelling, but to find a new way of doing it.
She transferred the control, courage and precision of aerial performance onto the page, pulling at a historical thread until it became a complete musical.
There is something wonderfully Fringe-like about that journey.
A former trapeze artist becomes a historian, writes a musical about the brother of Abraham Lincoln’s assassin and puts P.T. Barnum in charge of the memories.
That is not the sort of sentence you encounter while browsing the television listings.
Although the production deals with a familiar moment in history, it looks beyond the version most commonly taught in classrooms. Instead of concentrating solely on John Wilkes Booth, it examines the family relationship behind the headline and the consequences that continued long after the fatal night at Ford’s Theatre.
At its centre is a man attempting to return to the work he loves after his family name has become synonymous with tragedy.
Kaely may have discovered Edwin Booth through historical research, but the emotional bridge between their stories feels unmistakable.
Both knew what it meant to lose the future they had expected.
Both had to decide whether the stage could still belong to them.
Kaely will not be returning to Edinburgh forty feet above the audience. She is returning through words, music and a story that refused to let go of her.
Sometimes being grounded is not the end of the performance.
Sometimes it is where the next one begins.
1 Night at Ford’s Theatre runs at 6pm in the Bubble at Rotunda Theatre, Venue 65, from 7 to 23 August 2026. Tickets cost £12 to £14, and the production is suitable for audiences aged 12 and over.
To book a ticket to 1 Night at Ford’s Theatre, visit: https://www.edfringe.com/tickets/whats-on/1-night-at-ford-s-theatre
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