When it becomes necessary for a nation to ponder whether or not it is all it purports to be, whether the truths it holds to be self-evident are actually self-evident to all, that nation must look deeply at its traditions and stories and examine whether they need refreshing, both to better embody that nation’s past and the promise of its future.

A new production of 1776 aims to accomplish just that. The revival of the 1969 Tony Award–winning musical by Peter Stone and Sherman Edwards, fresh off a Roundabout Theatre Company–produced limited run on Broadway, is making a stop at Houston’s Hobby Center for the Performing Arts July 20 to 22, presented by Theatre Under the Stars (TUTS). The show charts the machinations of the Continental Congress as they hash out the Declaration of Independence, showing the Founding Fathers less as the venerable icons our history classes would portray them as, and more as men with fears and agendas who were making it up as they went along.

When the show comes to Houston, however, there won’t be men on the stage. The touring musical is bringing with it a cast comprised of people of color, women, transgender, and non-binary actors. In casting these figures—John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, et al.—in a way the show has not traditionally done so in the past, this new 1776 homes in on the ideas behind the Declaration and asks us to consider whether they hold up nearly 250 years later.

“The people who wrote [the Declaration of Independence] were human beings and they were innately flawed,” says Connor Lyon, who plays the dual roles of Martha Jefferson and Dr. Lyman Hall, the congressional delegate from Georgia. “This show addresses their shortcomings … specifically looking at even who was allowed in the room. I think this show kind of asks the question: Was that a horrible disservice to the nation?”

Lyon explains that the Founding Fathers didn’t ask for input from people who weren’t white men, even though those people were and still are the majority of the United States. She believes looking at this founding document in that light is a way to examine whether history may have committed a wrong, and if so, what’s reverberated from that and how we can go about changing it.

“We want to be independent because it's right and it's freedom,” Lyon muses on the storyline. “We want to protect the rights of men. But also, the wording men very clearly left people out. It's very interesting also playing a female because there are only two characters in the entire show that are females.” The other, Abigail Adams, famously wrote a letter to her husband, John Adams, in March 1776 imploring him to “remember the ladies and be more generous and favourable to them than your ancestors.”

Playing Martha, Lyon says, caused her to ponder women’s position in society in a way she hadn’t before. The wife of Thomas Jefferson, Martha came from a privileged background, the mistress of a plantation in Virginia made prosperous by enslaved labor. Her husband, who became the country’s third president and is responsible for, among many other things, the Louisiana Purchase and the founding of the University of Virginia, was widely considered one of the finest minds of his generation. As his wife, Martha had a high place in society. She had significantly more privilege than people of color, but didn’t have the same rights as a man.

“The show just asks tons of questions and says, back in 1776, we dealt with all of that, and now here we are in 2023 and we're still asking a lot of the same questions,” she says.

That’s heady stuff for a musical, and Lyon says the cast and creative team have had plenty of discussions about its themes. In taking the show around the country, they weren’t certain how it would be received across a wide swath of America.

“There were people that met us at the stage door that said, thank you for bringing this show here,” she says. “Some of our best sold markets were in the southern part of the United States, which we all were a bit surprised by because we thought that this would probably play better to a more liberal blue crowd. But I do think that there's an element of this show that really speaks to history buffs, because the show is quite all-encompassing. Overall, the reception has been very positive.”

As 1776 rolls into Houston, it’s somewhat of a homecoming for Lyon. A graduate of Sam Houston State University and originally from Rockport, Texas, Lyon says she got her start playing on Houston stages, performing with TUTS, Standing Room Only Productions, and AD Players, among others. She was last seen in Houston with the national tour of Jersey Boys in 2020. “Houston was where I learned to craft characters and to really deep-dive into some of the meatier, thought-provoking types of theater,” she says. “It really did prep me for a show like this.”

In addition to returning to the city that gave her her start, Lyon says she’s excited to be part of what she thinks is a very American show, one that gives voice to the country’s ideas, even as it’s presenting them in a different light than when the show was originally conceived.

“I think people are hungry to see themselves in the American story,” she says. “I really have been incredibly blessed by this experience to work with people who are different from me and to be on a team with them.”

1776 is at the Hobby Center for the Performing Arts July 20 to 22. Tickets start at $40.