Full Steam Ahead

Full Steam Ahead: A Musical Epic takes place in 1905 across notable Floridian locations such as St. Augustine, Palm Beach, and Miami—and in the not-so-remembered ethnic communities which lived, suffered, and perished there under brutal treatment. The show follows the lives of three characters of diverse cultural and socioeconomic backgrounds—Will, Anna, and Mendo—who experience the consequences of Henry Flagler's Gilded Age expansion of the Florida East Coast Railway. Will, a Pullman Porter of African-American descent, takes on a second job as a baseball player to entertain Flagler's wealthy winter visitors. He does so not just for the love of the game but for the love of his life, his wife Louisa. After her wrongful conviction, she must serve her sentence in Miami laying track for the railroad, and Will is determined to find her with the help of his brother-in-law Abel and baseball teammate Pat. Meanwhile, the young debutante Anna seeks to break free from the social strictures which compel her to marry rich and ignore her passion for workers' rights. She makes plans to take ownership of her father's company and reform its heinous business practices. Meanwhile, Cuban immigrant Mendo works as a servant in Flagler's Breakers Hotel, a posh resort and the location of Anna's debutante ball, to support his grandmother and siblings. Vastly different worlds collide as Will, Anna, and Mendo navigate and push back against a time where racial segregation, gender inequality, and class discrimination seem to make up the blueprint for the past, present, and future.