The president ial box, watching the popular comedy our american cousin. He died the next morning. We sat down with playwright james still and actor mary bacon to talk about the production of the widow lincoln. This is about 30 minutes. Were at ford theater with james still and actor mary bacon about the play the widow lincoln. Before we get started about the particulars of the play i wanted to ask both of you, what it is like and i want to start with you, mary because i think this is a new experience for you. James still has been here before, but what its like to produce a lincoln centered play in ford theater with that flag draped box right in the room with you . Whats that experience like . Well its definitely whats the word . Very aware of it. Im very aware of it. The first time i stepped into theater i was like whoa. And i thought why this a picture of the president there . Because i dont know a lot of the specific history of the theater. I dont i just since my research into the role. But also i have to say for me i thought a lot about how we turn a place into a shrine because we know what happened there. But that theres a lot of places where we just dont know what happened there. And so its a mixed thing. Its james has a line in the play, a lot of lines from his play come to me. He says god gives us our beloved ones, we make them our idols and they are taken from us. And i think that about that when i look at that box. I think about making him make him an idol and of course you know its an easy its just that we have participated in that generation. If that makes any sense. You have been you worked with the theater for a while. Youre accustomed to it. But does it ever really leave you, being near that box . No. I didnt know coming back this time if i would have that same kind of haunted feeling being in the theater, sitting there. But in this case the widow lincoln actually incorporates fords theater into the play. And so theres sort of a double experience going on. Youre watching mary lincoln remembering that night in fords theater and were in the audience remembering that night with her in fords theater. So thats a very unique experience for me as a writer. I think sometimes at fords theater they if i can speak for them they have to almost deny the box in a way. If youre doing a play to have nothing do to do with lincoln and yet you cant cover it up you cant not light it its there, its always present. So the widow lincoln whats wonderful and difficult in a certain way is that it is meant to be present. It is meant to be part of the play. And so i think sitting in the audience realizing there was a night on april 14th 1865 that a president and his wife sat in that box and were watching a play just like were going to be watching a play. And this terrible thing happened. That still moves me. I have to say im still moved by that. This play was commissioned for the anniversary. Is there any additional point yency because of the anniversary . Sure. There is a story behind that. I had written another play about Abraham Lincoln that was set in 1862, the year that he was working on the emancipation proclamation. I had always thought there was a second part to that play not a sequel but probably that it was i was not finished yet with the lincoln story. But i didnt really know what that was, when fords came to me and suggested i write a play for the 150th anniversary. I balked because i felt like i had written my Abraham Lincoln play, and i also thought well we all know the ending. We all know what happened. Theres no drama in that. We know the president was shot. We know that he died the next morning across the street. And we know the country went into mourning. But in that earlier play and in my research in that time i had really become i guess i will say attach to marry lincoln and curious about her. And curious about the ways that she had been maligned for so many years, and that people are so passionately pinion eighted about her even know 150 years after that event. And so i really proposed to fords i had a slightly different idea, which was to focus on mary, and that president lincoln himself would not really be a character, although of course he looms large in the play his absence i would say looms large. But he its really about mary and the what was that experience for mary lincoln . It is important 150th 150th anniversary. Would you explain the basic premise of the play rather than having the playwright do it . What is the play about . The play is about the period of time that mary lincoln spent in the white house right after he was shot because she holed herself up in a room that she had not been spent barely any time in for close to six weeks, fridays. And did not leave even though jonathan was waiting to move with the family and start running the country from the white house. And thats how she dealt with it, how she dealt with her grief. And thats what its about. Everything thats happening in the country while shes there, and i guess its about a womans insistence on mourning in her own way. Is the ford people immediately like the idea when you said there will be no lincoln in our anniversary play . You know to the producers credit i would say he took about one second and said yeah well do that. And so i think you know they know my work very well and they know how seriously i approach the subject. And i think i think that paul and his colleagues were taken by the mystery of this. Its really an untold story. There is very little written about it. I discovered it was really a footnote in a book, an article, something, and i thought truly someones written extensively about that time. And, of course, one of the reasons historians happen is we dont know what happened. Theres very little. Mary herself only wrote about it in one surviving letter and its a paragraph in which she describes the agony of this. But she doesnt talk about it in detail. Her dressmaker elizabeth kekley, who was her companion during that time talks about it a little bit in her book but thats it. So you can imagine for me as a drama there was a lot waiting for me to imagine. Does the room in the white house that she holed up in still exist . It was on the second floor. Im sure in some version it still exists. It was a room when mary was brought back to the white house the next morning after the president died, she wouldnt go into any of the rooms where she had any associated memories, so her own bedroom, any of the rooms. And she found herself in this particular room, which was a small room living quarters on the second floor that had been appointed to be sort of a writing room for lincoln for the summer. And she went in and wouldnt leave. But before we get to that part of the story, isnt it true that while lincoln was dying right across the street from where we were, i dont know if this was victorian or not but they would not let her be with her husband, they took her out of the room . She was in a little room right next door and they didnt tell her he was dying, like she knew it was grave but they didnt tell her. She talks about that that you know, thats in catherine clintons book she said why didnt anyone tell me he was dying, that he was at his last you know his last breath . Which you can, you know you can tell when someone is in that stage. So yeah they banished her from the room. She was a weeping woman, right . He said she was weeping. She would come in periodically and collapse, and panic, anxiety, grief, and they would shuttle her out. This room right next door, i would say in the play thats quite an event in the play the fact that she was kept out, because there was a tradition of being with that dying person for the wife to be there in the last moments with your beloved and the fact that she was denied that was just one more thing that i think mary lincoln felt in my play, im talking about, felt, you know that other people were taking control over her. And so its quite an event in the play because i had found a report that one of the attending doctors to lincoln kept a little notebook of his pulse all through the night. And it just was these numbers. And so in the play interexpertsed with marys desire to be with her husband during those moments. You and i had a chance to talk before we started recording this, about acknowledging all of the lincoln scholars, and all of the lincoln wasnt in a be scholars. So many people know a great deal about lincolns life. And yet you chose a period where very little is known. Giving you a lot of dramatic latitude. Did you do that intentionally so that there wouldnt be people saying you got this wrong, you got that wrong . Well it is a bit intimidating, because youre absolutely right. And the way i make piece peace with that there will be people who know more about all of this than i do. On the other hand, thats not really my job. My job is really as a story teller, and is as an empathy writer to bring mary lincoln and that time in her life to viv id life for an audience. After doing the first play there was so much available to me about lincoln. You can read for the rest of your life and but with mary it was a different experience. And i i did appreciate having a little bit of room to do my own imagining about her. What was your source of information . You found the small notations but what was the Historical Research that went into your crafting of the story . Sure. My style with a period piece like this is to start very specifically with things that were written in the time, rather than starting with things that are 21st century lens looking back, because in a certain way those wonderful writers, many of them scholars and historians are doing exactly what im doing. Theyre looking at sources and creating a lens through which to tell that story. So rather than cheat so obviously and take them at their word, what they made of mary lincoln, i went back some interest things newspapers of the day, you can read all of those newspapers of the day. There are many books that were published right after lincolns death. Many people wanted to jump on that bandwagon and, you know join the many who thought they had something original to say about lincoln. And some of them not very many but some wrote a tiny bit about mary. She was often not in any of those books. So that was interesting. That was a big clue to me, as well, is how often she was missing from the story of lincoln. One thing i did that i found very interesting is i went back and i found about maybe seven or eight plays that had been written right after the assassination about lincoln. And just reading how they treated the story of the civil war in some ways mary lincoln, Abraham Lincoln, some of them were wild much wilder than anything i could write. That kind of liberated me, as well, because i realized there were writers, 150 years ago, trying to make sense of this time. And so that was i read books written in the 20th century a beautiful, small, slim volume and he was part of the new wave of writers who were starting to reconsider the image and reputation of mary lincoln, that maybe she had gotten a bad deal in terms of because for about 50 years after lincolns death there was so Much Negative written about her. I started to find some of the things that if not positive at least were looking at maybe there are two sides to this. There was enough source material that i felt like i could find interest things. And what was the time from yes i have this commission until the opening debut night . How much time was involved . I would say it was about three years maybe, that i had. So really spent a solid year researching, i went back to springfield, illinois, to the president ial museum there. I went to lexington to the house, and i also spent time with one of the largest private collectors of lincoln memorabilia in Los Angeles Louise taper, and she was able to let me look firsthand at some of marys you know her comb her bible, the gloves that she wore at innation inauguration. How many characters are in your play . There are eight actors who play a variety of characters. Are all the character is historically accurate or do you take license with them . Were all of them known to have gone into that room during that time period . Oh no no. But they all existed at that time . They are. Queen victoria is in the play. She wrote a letter that was famous, and she appears to mary in the form of that letter but in three dimensions. Laura keene, the actress and our american cousin whose play it was . Whose play was at fords, our american cousin that was being acted when the terrible thing, tragedy happened on stage, and the fact that lawyer and mary lincoln were linked forever by that event, i was very intrigued by those two women and what they might have to say to each other. Sidebar question after the tragedy happened here was the play ever produced again . Oh yes, that play was the most produced play in the country and there were many versions of it. They were booked to do a performance two days later. She went to cincinnati to do it but she was brought back to washington because they were all suspects. Interesting. She continued. So mary bacon how did you get involved with this project . Well i did a premier of james, play of james, called iron kisses. I cant remember how many years ago. But i knew i knew him, and then so when the audition came up, just knowing the writer and that its a new play of his, that makes you interested immediately, if you liked him. And you believe in their voice and the strength of their plays. And and also for me my late motherinlaw, my husbands mother, was a really wonderful woman, judy lindsay. And she was in new york city. She went to a theater. She read everything. She read ever she was trying her hand at playwriting after a career at colombia university. And she she was actually writing a play about mary lincoln. And i never got to talk to her about it because she died unexexpectedly about four years ago. And i it was really creepy that when this came up i felt obligated to explore at least it did make me pause and think what was she so taken with . She herself experienced the death of her first husband untimely death of her first husband at the ill an of 36 and then the untimely death of her second husband when he was 62. She was married to her first husband one year longer than her second husband. And i thought maybe its the grief that she went through that was something she was interested in. Although i do not know judy i do not know. But she was very taken with mary lincoln. And then i then you know you do an audition and get it up on its feet. The way james is writing it reads like poetry. And this is a poetic play. If i may say so its hes writing peoples feelings. Mary is putting her feelings into words, which is poetic. And the way its i said this a million times, beautifully written. And so i wanted to feel how it felt as a drama, as drama up on my feet. And sometimes i dont know that until im up on my feet in an audition. And i think that really works. And that of course, was intriguing. So those are the two things i brought to it with my Prior Experience with james. Is it your first historical character . Oh my gosh. Im sure im terrible when i my first historical character . Well if it doesnt immediately come to you, this is certainly has to be one of the best known historical characters youve ever played. Yes. People have opinions and they read a lot about her. So how did you prepare yourself to play this role . Well, i started i found my mothers my motherinlaws we pulled down a box of her stuff, and she had like four biographies, so i started looking at them. And then i found that biographers have a hard time keeping their own opinion out of it, and that was clear when i would read it from two different perspectives. And so i just read. And then i researched biographies and tried to discern which ones i felt were going to be more evenhanded, i guess, which ones appealed to me more. And so i did that. And then i read what was basically what you can look up on the internet. And i rewatched lincoln because i think sally field did her great service. I think how she portrayed mary lincoln was very bright emotional but to me what i loved about her portrayal is she had a reason for behaving the way she did when she had a fit, you know, to get her husband to do something or to get something you know, to do something, to change something, not just being emotional. And i liked that a lot. I took from all these different places. But actually playing did role i will tell you i havent had to work that hard in terms of like i have freed myself completely and i guess i do as an actor, but completely of trying to be like mary lincoln. Ive never been told to try to look like her. I dont look anything like her. We have brown hair but body type were completely different. And thats not been the focus where i think with your previous play, when youre playing lincoln you have to look like lincoln, you have to approximate some semblance to the because, you know but mary lincoln had a very distinct look and thats not been the part of this. But what i want to say about james play is that i feel all i have to do is really live in the text, because its all there for me. In terms of like creating a character, im not creating one and putting it on top of the words ive been given to say. I think they just its evident if i just say those words and experience the ability as truthfully as i can. She just emerges, her character, which i was go ahead. How old was she when the assassination happened . 47. 47 . 47. And i guess its a question for both of you in terms of interpretation. Going back to what happened in that box, its almost unbelievable to imagine youre sitting and watching a play and that your spouse would be shot dead at close rang in that environment. How do you capture how do you understand what kind of emotion people would go through experiencing that . And how do you translate it both in what you wrote and in what youre producing on the stage . Well i guess starting with me, that was a very big clue to me when you think, you know youre holding your loved ones hand in the moment before hes killed. Its not hard to imagine how traumatic that would be. That is a way in for me to at least have empathy for mary lincoln. I may not understand everything she did, i may not agree with it. The play doesnt try to make her out to be nicer than she really was or you know and i dont have an ax to grind. I didnt come into this with an agenda of i want to set the record straight about mary lincoln. I really wanted to tell the story about this incredibly smart, savvy, political mother and wife who witnessed her husbands death. And the what she might have gone through to try to get on with her life. And part of the tragedy with mary lincoln, of course is that my play is focused on these fridays, but as most of us know yes, she left that white house but you know her life didnt get better. In many ways it became even more challenging. So that also meant the play isnt about, you know at the end, okay, the fun comes out and everything is fine. She leaves the room and that is something that is a step in her life. But its its not over. Its not an easy one. So i think how to do that on stage, how to create that its terrifying. It was very terrifying to write. It was hard to live with because i felt like it was my obligation to take that on as