Michael Knight, history buff and playwright since 2008, got hung up on a historical moment: The night Dolley Madison, wife of James Madison and the first ever first lady, saved the historic Lansdowne portrait of George Washington from the White House just hours before the English burned it down during the war of 1812.
“I was like, ‘There is a story there,’” Knight tells Orlando Weekly. “I am so intrigued by that.” And so the seed was planted that eventually grew into side-splitting satire Dolley F**king Madison.
Knight says that he didn’t think much about it at first, but that he can’t help but zone in on specific historical moments, which inspire much of his work. Knight has written plays about the creation of the King James Bible — The Fabulous King James Bible — as well as pivotal moments throughout American history.
“I wrote a play called The Foreplay, which was an exploration of the birth of our nation — a fun little play on words — which was about the founding of the country and the creation of the bill of rights,” Knight says.
At a performance of The Foreplay, someone was talking about Dolley and her story, saying she would be a good person to write a satirical play about.
Knight spoke to local singer-songwriter Hannah McGinley Lemasters — who plays Madison in the show — off and on about the idea for years; workshopping the story, determining whether they’d zone in on just the night or take the audience through Madison’s entire life.
The two did their research, discussing back and forth about women in politics, the nature of democracy and what conversations she actually had with the British soldiers in the moments before they burned the White House down.
“There’s a lot of historical precedent that she literally welcomed, or distracted them a little bit, while she got stuff out,” Knight says. “I’m huge into history and this was just a person that kind of just stuck in my head, and I couldn’t crack the story until I talked it out with the person who ended up playing Dolley.”
Knight tells Orlando Weekly that history is his No. 1 source of inspiration, because so much of it is reflected in today’s world.
“There’s always a historical precedent for anything that’s happening in our world today, and so if we can examine history and take those moments, we can make more sense of what’s happening today.”
Knight says that part of the play’s message is that the White House and the people in it aren’t America, even though they represent the entirety of the nation. He believes that the United States is the sum of its people, and that one man in office can’t define what America is.
“I myself personally feel terrible about the place that our country is in right now, and I absolutely am not OK with our leadership,” Knight says. “But I think that if we rally around what created us in the first place and try to remind ourselves of that, we can come out of it.”
Knight’s philosophy is that history has its hilarity, a big reason why it inspires his work so heavily. Particularly, he always found it funny that the British thought they won the war when they burned down the White House.
“I always thought it was a hilarious bit that the British went in there and were like, ‘All right, we did it, we stuck our flag in the ground, we burned down your home base, we win,’” Knight says. “And the United States went, ‘Nah, this is a house, you didn’t win.’”
Dolley F**king Madison was first performed at Fringe, where it went down a storm, and Knight thought that since those shows were sell-outs and America’s 250th birthday was right around the corner, he could restage it as July 4 celebration that is a little more timely and topical than just another fireworks show. So Madison returns to the stage at New Generation Theatrical for a few more sold-out shows.
“I am so thrilled to keep this story alive. We’re celebrating the United States’ 250th birthday this year, and I happened to create a story about a formidable character in our nation’s history,” Knight says. “Dolley Madison is absolutely a staple of this country’s history. She set the precedent for what a first lady should be. I was just in Washington, D.C., and she’s literally everywhere.”
8 p.m. Friday & Sunday, July 3 & 5, New Generation Theatrical, 3201 E. Colonial Drive, newgentheatrical.org, SOLD OUT.
This article appears in July 1-7, 2026 — Newcomers Guide.