Earll Kingston as Gen. Ulysses S. Grant
Earll Kingston is no stranger to
portraying historical figures. He interpreted John Wesley Powell,
Civil War hero and noted explorer of the early American West,
in a one-man show staged for tourists at Grand Canyon from 1989
to '96. There he took many rafting trips on the Colorado River,
backpacked into the canyon and grew to love the Southwest.
A former Navy man, Kingston attended the University of California,
Berkeley, where he earned a Bachelor's Degree in English and
then earned a Master's in Theater Arts at University of Hawaii.
He was a resident of Hawaii for 17 years (1967 - '84) during
which time he made appearances in the "Hawaii 5-0"
and "Magnum, P.I." television series.
He has also worked in the San Francisco Bay area with the Magic
Theatre and the Berkeley Repertory Theatre. In recent years
Earll worked with Viaduct Theatre, a Bay Area acting troupe
that stages works by modern Irish playwrights. The troupe's
performing venue? An authentic Irish pub in San Francisco. He
was Elder Piper in Frank McGinnis' "Observe the Sons of
Ulster Marching Toward the Somme" which won the Bay Area
Critic Circle's Award as Best Production of 1997.
Kingston and his wife, noted author Maxine Hong Kingston, now
live in Oakland, Calif., where Maxine is a senior lecturer at
University of California, Berkeley. Earll and Maxine are the
parents of entertainer Joe Kingston who recently released his
first CD, "On the Swing Shift."
Sam Polson as Gen.
Robert E. Lee
Sam Polson shares a number
of similarities with Robert E. Lee. In addition to the white
beard, he also is a Virginian -- born less than 100 miles from
the Lee homestead. As with "Bobby Lee," Polson was
a career military man. Instead of shifting from Union to Confederacy,
however, Sam shifted his talents as a photojournalist from the
Navy to the Air Force, retiring as an USAF Master Sergeant in
1972. Among his assignments was coverage of the space program,
anti-submarine patrols in the Atlantic, President Kennedy's
funeral and aeromedical evacuation operations in Vietnam.
After leaving the military, Sam held editorial positions with
several national publications in Washington, D.C., until the
acting bug bit him. Then, in his mid-50s, he accepted a position
on the public affairs staff of the Catholic University of America
when offered free tuition in the University's highly regarded
Drama Department. Since then, Polson has appeared in more than
40 stage productions ranging from Shakespeare to audience-participation
murder mysteries. He has been "interpreting" Gen.
Lee at Civil War reenactments for the past nine years.
Sam fell in love with Hawaii while stationed at Hickam AFB in
the late '60s and moved back to the Islands to stay in 1994.
He is married to Patricia Elser Gillespie, daughter of the late
playwright Donald Elser. She teaches Video and Film Production
at a prestigious Honolulu high school and is an award-winning
documentary filmmaker in her own right.
