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the presidential 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. >> we're 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 it's like to produce a lincoln centered play in ford theater with that flag draped box right in the room with you? what's that experience like? >> well it's definitely -- what's the word? very aware of it. i'm 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 don't know a lot of the specific history of the theater. i don't -- 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 there's a lot of places where we just don't know what happened there. and so it's a mixed thing. it's -- 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 it's an easy -- it's just that we have participated in that generation.

if that makes any sense. >> you have been -- you worked with the theater for a while. you're accustomed to it. but does it ever really leave you, being near that box? >> no. i didn't 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 ford's theater into the play. and so there's sort of a double experience going on. you're watching mary lincoln remembering that night in ford's theater and we're in the audience remembering that night with her in ford's theater. so that's a very unique experience for me as a writer. i think sometimes at ford's theater they -- if i can speak for them they have to almost deny the box in a way. if you're doing a play to have nothing do to do with lincoln and yet you can't cover it up you can't not light it it's there, it's always present.

so the widow lincoln what's 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 we're going to be watching a play. and this terrible thing happened. that still moves me. i have to say i'm 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 didn't really know what that was, when ford's 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. there's 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 -- it's 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 that's how she dealt with it, how she dealt with her grief. and that's what it's about. everything that's happening in the country while she's there, and -- i guess it's about a woman's 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 producer's credit i would say he took about one second and said yeah we'll 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. it's 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 someone's written extensively about that time. and, of course, one of the reasons historians happen is we don't know what happened. there's very little. mary herself only wrote about it in one surviving letter and it's a paragraph in which she describes the agony of this. but she doesn't 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 that's 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.

i'm 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 wouldn't 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 wouldn't leave. >> but before we get to that part of the story, isn't it true that while lincoln was dying right across the street from where we were, i don't 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 didn't tell her he was dying, like she knew it was grave but they didn't tell her. she talks about that that you know, that's in catherine

clinton's book she said why didn't 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 that's 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, i'm talking about,

felt, you know that other people were taking control over her. and so it's 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 mary's 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 wasn't in a be scholars. so many people know a great deal about lincoln's 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 wouldn't be people saying you got this wrong, you got that wrong? >> well it is a bit

intimidating, because you're 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, that's 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 i'm doing. they're 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 lincoln's 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 lincoln's death there was so much negative written about her. i started to find some of the things that if not positive at least we're 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 presidential 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 mary's 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 ford's, 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 can't 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 it's 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 mother-in-law, my husband's

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 unex-expectedly 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 i'll 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 it's 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 it's -- he's writing people's feelings. mary is putting her feelings into words, which is poetic. and the way it's -- 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 don't know that until i'm 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. i'm sure -- i'm terrible when i -- my first historical character? well if it doesn't immediately come to you, this is certainly -- has to be one of the best known historical characters you've 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 mother's -- my mother-in-law's -- 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 haven't 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. i've never been told to try to look like her. i don't look anything like her. we have brown hair but body type we're completely different.

and that's not been the focus where i think with your previous play, when you're 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 that's 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 it's all there for me. in terms of like creating a character, i'm not creating one and putting it on top of the words i've been given to say. i think they just -- it's 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 it's a question for both of you in terms of interpretation. going back to what happened in that box, it's almost

unbelievable to imagine you're 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 you're producing on the stage? >> well i guess starting with me, that was a very big clue to me when you think, you know you're holding your loved one's hand in the moment before he's killed. it's 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 doesn't try to make her out to be nicer than she really was or you know and i don't have an ax to grind. i didn't 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 husband's 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 didn't get better. in many ways it became even more challenging. so that also meant the play isn't 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 it's -- it's not over.

it's not an easy one. so i think how to do that on stage, how to create that it's 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 somebody who had to do what i knew and after and eventually mary would do which would be to live that three dimensionally. so i wanted to do it as fully as i can to make it an offer we were talking earlier about, that wonderful hand off that happens between a writer and actor. and we're in that process right now really where i'm handing this off and she is mary lincoln. it's not my mary lincoln now, it's hers. and so i'll let you talk about that, how you do that. >> well how do you do that? how do you create a traumatic experience on stage?

>> to imagine living lieu that how do you capture that without ever experiencing something that horrific in your own life? >> well as an actor i will say that any actor, a good actor, hopefully, can portray anything that can happen to a human being. >> i'm asking for the secret to the actor's craft. >> i think everyone probably goes about it a different way. i think when i was younger it was a lot about trying to recreate. i don't -- i've been through more tragedy since then, and more deaths and grief. i'm not as surprised by tragic events, you know. >> was it different when you put the costumes on? >> it was painful. >> was it? >> yes. yes and -- yes and no. there's a really hard time when you leave the rehearsal room. you created everything with the rehearsal props, you have a relationship to that skirt and

you put a lot of emotional investment into it. so it can be very jarring, actually. but now that we're here and we're in the actual clothes, it's been helpful because it's just how the -- you know, i'm starting to have dreams about being in this time period you know. >> i feel very emotional watching them in costume because there's something about the silhouette, the historical silhouette especially in terms of what women wore then. you know, it's not something i think about all the time. but all the you hads enseing it again three dimensionally, it's haunting. >> the restriction is -- the restriction is really -- because i think one thing i -- >> restriction of the -- >> of the clothes, the corset but the weight of those clothes. they were so heavy. and women -- you couldn't move very much. and then you're so weighed down and how you can move is

limiting. >> how women work and find physically. >> absolutely. in so many ways. >> that's one of the things the play is about, is about victoria america how -- what that -- how limiting that was for a woman like mary lincoln who was educated and smart. >> and makes you admire her all the more for working with what she had, how she did make herself look beautiful, and knowing to put flowers in her hair, and like she just -- she worked it. and i really have a great admiration for that now, because i can see how -- what the challenges were. >> this play will be staged -- is staged for a short period of time for the anniversary. what happens to it after this? it's a special project for a special event in time but what will its future be? >> i wish i knew. i mean, as a writer, in the

theater, i always -- everything i write i have to imagine and hope it will have life beyond its first production. and i have to -- all of my lays have and i hope this one is no different. obviously this is a very special production of this play but this play can be done and hopefully will be done at other theaters who don't have this firsthand relationship with the event. but you know it's a big country and a lot of people have a lot of feeling about mary lincoln. i saw the heavens are black in springfield, illinois, at the museum done by local actors and i was so moved because i didn't know until i saw it in springfield how often the world "springfield" came up in that play, and suddenly i was sitting with all these people watching a play that was really about springfield, when it was here it was about washington. and so i think that's you know it will just be -- it will find

hopefully its home in different places to people that this might have meaning for. >> for people who come and experience the play what do you want to leave them with? what is the ultimate message of this play for them? >> i will risk sounding coy but i've kind of given up on the idea of i can even wish that. what i do hope is that knowing that many many people have big opinions about mary lincoln, that i hope the play will at least engage those opinions. and if not change them for a couple of hours they might consider who mary lincoln was, might have been and maybe look at her a little differently. >> are there universal messages in the play as well? >> absolutely. >> what would those be? what do you hope those would be? >> i think grief is a process grief is both very private and very public.

and no one can do it for you. that you have to go through that. and as mary said mary lincoln did it on her own terms. and that didn't please a lot of people that she did it on her own terms. and i think there's a message in there, as well, that sometimes you have to do it. >> a very big -- she basically said country, i'm going to do this my own way, i don't care that the president needs to come into the white house. i guess we'll close with the same question for you. you absorbed this character and learning how to portray her on stage. what do you want people to take away from your performance? >> well, i was going to say this earlier what i think about -- one thing about playing this role i have just imagined being a woman in this set of circumstances, and i think that in some ways i hope that people will see just -- i don't want to say an ordinary person, not that she was ordinary but just like a

person going through these circumstances that all women -- you know all women go through grief. women who lose their husbands, whose main source of some of -- was their world, how many world have to pick up or men have to pick up and fill their identity without someone -- i think for mary lincoln her identity was based in abraham. >> no pension after he died. >> that's right. >> and then you know, that's victorian time like what was available to her to do? if she could have found something to do i think she would have had a easier time but women at -- she talks about being the widow, the quiet, charming widow and what your options are. so i'm hoping they'll take away a sense of the time which has a lot to do with how she was perceived and portrayed in that

time. now we don't -- we would never question that a woman needs to grief, or how she is behaving makes complete sense. to me praying has always made complete sense. it's rational to me how she behaves in this play. i'm hoping they'll take that away with them. >> there's a moment the play where she says what's to become of me? and that's a genuine question for mary lincoln in this moment. i think it's a universal question we all feel in those moments of intense loss and grief, what is to become of me? what am i going to do? where will i go? will i love? so i feel like those were universal things. >> who am i? >> well thanks to both of you. the play writ and the actor of mary lincoln portraying mary lincoln in the widow lincoln. thank you for your time. >> thank you. >> with live coverage of the u.s. house on c-span and the senate on c-span two, here on c-span-3 we complement the

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