>> this play was commissioned for the 150th anniversary. is there any additional poignancy because of the anniversary? >> oh, sure. and there's a little story behind that. i had written another play about abraham lincoln set in 1862. i had always thought there was a second part. i didn't really know what that was. when ford came to me and suggested to write a play for the 150th anniversary, i balked a little bit 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 that the country went into mourning. but in that earlier play in my research in that time i had really become attached. and that president lincoln himself would not really be a character. although, of course, he looms large in the play.

playwright do it, tell us what the play is all about. so people understand what we're talking about. >> 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 spent barely any time in for close to six weeks, 40 days, and did not leave. even though johnson was waiting to move in with his 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. and everything that's happening in the country while she's there, and it's -- i guess it's about a woman's insistence on mourning in her own way. >> did the ford's 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. i think that paul and his colleagues were taken by the mystery of this. and it's really an untold story. there's very little written about it. i mean i discovered it was really a footnote in a book, an article, something, and i thought, surely someone has written extensively about that time. and of course one of the reasons historians haven't is that we don't know what happened. there's very little. mary herself only wrote about it in one surviving letter. and it's really a paragraph in which she describes the agony of it. but she doesn't talk about it in

detail. her dressmaker, elizabeth keckley 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 dramatist there was a lot to imagine. >> does the room in the white house she was holed up in still exist? >> that's a great question. it was on the second floor. i'm sure in some version it 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 in to any of the rooms where she had any associated memories. so her own bedroom. any of the rooms. she found herself in this particular room, which was a small room. it was in the living quarters in 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. >> before we get to that part of the story, isn't it true that while lincoln was dying across

the street from where we were, i don't know if this was victorian mores or what but they would not let her be with her husband? they took her out of the room? >> she was in a room right next door. 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 -- that you know, that's in catherine clinton's book right after they announced his death to her. why didn't anyone tell me that he was dying? that he was at his last, you know, his last breaths. which you can, you know, you can tell when someone is in that stage. so, yeah, was it stanton who banished her from the room, in our play. in james' play banished her from the room. >> because she was weeping and wailing woman, right? >> because she was weeping and

upset. >> she would come in periodically and, you know, collapse in panic, anxiety, grief. and they would shovel her out. and you know, it was 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 southern tradition of being with that dying person for the wife, you know, to be there with that 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, interspersed 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 genuine lincoln scholars, and all of the lincoln wanna-be scholars there are in the country. so 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. >> mm-hmm. >> did you do that intentionally so that there wouldn't be people saying, he got this wrong? he got that wrong? >> well, it is a bit intimidating because you have to -- the way i make this out there will always be people who know more about all of this than i do. on the other hand, that is not really my job. my job is as a storyteller and an empathetic writer to bring mary lincoln and that time in her life to vivid life for an audience. but i have to say after doing the first play "the heavens were hung in black" where there was so much available to me about lincoln. you can read for the rest of your life. 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. >> so what was your source of

information? you found these 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 specificly 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. rather than cheat so obviously and take them at their word, what they made of mary lincoln, i went back -- some things, of course 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 join the many who thought they had something original to say about lincoln. some of them, not very many, but some wrote a tiny bit about mary. she was often not in any of those books. that was interesting. that was a big clue to me, as well. is how often she is missing from the story of lincoln. one thing 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. just reading how they treated the story of the civil war, in some ways mary lincoln, abraham lincoln, some of the plays were wild. much wilder than anything i could write. so that kind of liberated me, as well, because i realized there were writers 150 years ago trying to make sense of this time in a theatrical language, as well. so that was freeing. then i started to read books that were written in the 20th century. carl sandberg wrote a beautiful, small, slim volume. and he was part of the new wave of writers who were starting to reconsider the image and representation of mary lincoln. maybe she had gotten a bad deal in terms of -- because for about 50 years after lincoln's death there was so much negative that was 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 interesting things. >> what was the time from, yes, i have this commissioned, to the opening debut? how much time is involved in all this? >> i would say it was about three years, maybe. that i had. so i really spent a solid year researching. i went back to springfield, illinois, to the presidential museum there. i went to lexington to the todd house. i also spent time with one of the largest private collectors of lincoln memorabilia in los angeles, louis taper and she was able to let me, you know, look firsthand at some of mary's -- mary lincoln's, you know, her comb, her bible, her gloves -- the gloves that she wore at the inauguration. that was incredibly moving to me. >> how many players are in your play? >> there are eight actors who play a variety of characters. >> are all the characters historically accurate? or do you take some license with them? were all of them known to have gone in to that room during that time? >> oh, no, no. >> but they all existed? >> they are. queen victoria is in the play. she wrote a letter to mary lincoln that was very famous and she appears to mary in the form of that letter. but in three dimension. laura keen the actress in "our american cousin" -- >> whose play it was. >> whose play was at ford's, "our american cousin" that was being acted when the terrible thing -- terrible tragedy happened onstage.

and the fact that laura keen 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. >> side bar question. after the tragedy happened here was her play ever produced again? >> oh, yes. that play was the most produced play in the country and there were many versions of it. in fact, they were booked to do a performance two days later and she went to cincinnati to do it, but she was brought back to washington because they were all suspects. but yeah, she continued. >> so mary bacon, how did you get involved with this project? >> well, i am -- i did a premiere -- well premiere of james' play of 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. also, for me, my late mother-in-law, my husband's mother was a really wonderful

woman. judy lindsay. i should say her name. she was in new york city. she went to the theater, she read everything. she read every -- and she was also trying her hand at playwrighting, after a career in journalism, working at columbia university, and cpj.

and she was actually writing a play about mary lincoln. and i never got to talk to her about it because she died unexpected ly about four years ago. it was really creepy that when this came up, i felt obligated to explore. that was -- it did make me pause and think, well what was she so taken with? she herself experienced the death of her first husband, untimely death of her first

husband, at the age of 36, and then the untimely death of her second husband at the age of -- when he was 62. she was married to her first husband one year longer than her second husband. i thought maybe it was 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 todd lincoln. and then, you know, you do an

audition and you get it up on its feet. because the way james is writing, it reads like poetry. and this is a very poetic play. i think, if i may say so, he's writing about -- he's writing -- he's writing people's feelings. mary is putting her feelings

into words. which is poetic. and the way it's -- i've said this to him a million times, it was beautifully written. so i wanted to feel how it felt as a drama. you know, as drama. up on my feet. and sometimes i don't know that

until i'm up on my feet in an audition. wow, this really works. and that, of course, was intriguing. those are the two things i brought to it, my prior experience with james and then i may not agree with it. the play doesn't try to make her out to be nicer than she really was. and i don't have an axe to grind. i didn't come in with an agenda. 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 40 days. as most of us know yes, she left that white house but her

life didn't get better. in many ways, it became even more challenging. that also meant the play isn't about -- at the end okay, the sun comes out and everything's fine. she leaves the room and that is something. that is a step in -- 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, you know. it was very terrifying to write. it was hard to live with because it felt like it was my obligation to take that on as somebody who had to do what i knew, an actor and eventually mary would do to live that three dimensionally. i wanted to do it as fully as i can. we were talking about that wonderful handoff that happens

between a writer and an actor. we're in that process right now where i'm handing this off and she is mary lincoln. it's not my mary lincoln now. it's hers. i'll let you talk about how you do that. >> well -- how do you do that? how do you create a traumatic experience on stage. >> specifically this one. because i mean to imagine living through that. how do you capture that without ever experiencing something that horrific in your own line? >> as an actor, i will say that any actor -- a good actor can portray anything that can happen to the human being. >> so i'm asking for the secret to the actor's craft. >> yeah. i think everyone goes about it a different way. i've been through more tragedy since then and more death 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've created everything with the -- you have a relationship to that skirt and you've put a lot of emotional investment into it. so it can be very jarring, actually. now that we're here and we're in the actual clothes, it's been helpful because it's just -- i'm starting to have dreams about being in this time period you know. >> i feel very emotional watching them in costume. there's something about that silhouette that historical silhouette in terms of what women wore then. you know it's not something i think about all the time, but all of a sudden seeing it again three dimensionally, it's

haunting. >> the restriction is really -- because i think -- >> restriction of the corset? >> of the clothes. it's also 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 then how you can move is limiting. >> uh-huh. so instructive about how women work and find physically -- >> absolutely. >> in so many ways. >> that's one of the things the play is about. about victoria america, how limiting that was for a woman like mary lincoln who was educated and smart. >> it makes me 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. she worked it. and i really have a great

admiration for that now because i can see how -- how -- what the challenges were. >> this play 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 a life beyond its first production. i have to say all of my plays have. 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 first-hand 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 he vens in

springfield, illinois, done by local actors. and i was so moved because i didn't know until i saw it in springfield how often the word springfield came up in that play. suddenly, i was watching a play with them that was really about springfield. when it was here, it was about washington. it will find hopefully its home in different places to people. >> so ultimately 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 -- i will risk sounding coy here. i have kind of given up on the idea that i can even wish that. what i do hope is that knowing that 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? >> absolutely. >> what do you hope they would be? >> i think that grief is a process. grief is both very private and very public. and there -- 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. that didn't please a lot of people, that she did it on her own terms. i think there's a message in there as well that sometimes you have to do it. >> and a very -- she basically said, country, i'm going to do it my own way, i don't care that the president needs to come into the white house. we'll close with the same question for you. you absorbed this character in

learning how to portray her on stage. what do you want people to take away from your performance? >> i was going to say this earlier. 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 people will see -- i don't want to say an ordinary person not that she was ordinary but just 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 -- was their world, how many women have to pick up or men have to pick up and build their identity without someone who -- and i think for mary lincoln who her entire identity was based in abraham lincoln. >> and financial resources right? no pension after he died. >> that's victorian time what

was available for her to do. if she could have found something to do i think she would have had an easier time. she talks a lot about being the widow, the quiet charming widow and what your options are. i'm hoping they'll take away a sense of the massageisogyny of the time. now, we would never question that a woman needs to grieve or how she's behaving. to me playing 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 where she says, what's to become of me. 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 am i going to do, where

will i go, will i love. so i feel like those are universal things. >> who am i. >> thanks to both of you, the play write and the actor of mary lincoln. thank you for your time. this week while congress is in recess book tv and american history tv are in prime time. beginning tuesday night at 8:00 eastern. featuring programs like topics like the war on terror with the report on torture and the guantanamo diary. on wednesday, it's world affairs talking about china's secret plan to replace america as a super power and the emerging crisis in europe. on thursday, politics in the white house with david axle rod and mike huckabee. then on friday a look at pakistan through the eyes of a woman raised in karachi. and on tuesday night at 8:00

interviews with former korean pows. on wednesday, the 100th anniversary of the release of the film "the birth of a nation." the showing of the film, followed by a reair of our call-in program. and thursdays, historians debate the social changes of the 1970s. friday japanese american interment during world war ii. this week in prime time. when president lincoln was shot on april 14th 1865 he was wearing a black great coat made especially for his second inauguration. the coat is cared for by the national park service and was on display in the lobby of ford's theater in 2011. currently, the coat is located

in a storage facility for stabilization because of its fragility. it will be on display again in an exhibit at the theater to commemorate the 159th anniversary of lincoln's assassination. we visit ford's theater when the great coat was on display in february of 2011. american history tv documented the process of removing a replica coat and placing the original coat on display for the public and learn how the artifact is preserved for future generations.

>> yeah -- >> she's our official -- >> so as you can see, this is the box that holds the greatcoat. and we are just about ready to put it in its special display case. we have a special storage area that we keep the greatcoat for half the year. and we have it on display in february through the summer. so we put it up right around the time of lincoln's birthday which is this saturday, the 12th. then we have it up during our busiest season, the spring season. that's also the time of april when the assassination anniversary comes around,