A
Note from the Playwright
You could argue that a fascination with heroes is a retreat in despair
from the over- whelming problems of our own time. But I would argue
back
that in dark times we can use a good hero and might as well go with
quality. I think of Lincoln as a gift to us all --
The only
known photograph of President Lincoln (center, with stovepipe hat),
giving his Gettysburg Address on November 19, 1863
his
existence and
unlikely career, what he did, said, and wrote, the stories about him
that have come down to us. My knowledge of Lincoln had been that of any
schoolboy growing up in Los Angeles in the nineteen fifties and
sixties. I knew his birthday was February 12, a day we got off from
school; he had a funny beard, walked six miles to return two cents,
then freed the slaves. And of course, then Ford's Theatre. And there
the learning had stopped. The whole impression was fixed, a part of the
landscape so familiar I never questioned it -- the good and great man,
his penny profile as remote and lifeless as the copper it was stamped
on. It was an impression I carried pretty much intact into adulthood,
which is to say that as an adult, I looked at Lincoln through the eyes
of a child. Somewhere deep in middle age, I started to remedy this
defect. When I first read the description of Mrs. Harvey's White House
visits in Volume III of Carl Sandburg's The War Years, the tale
encapsulated for me everything which was singular about Lincoln's
character, particularly his relentless capacity for introspection and
change. What made it irresistible was the contrast it provided with
George W. Bush's treatment of Cindy Sheehan, who waited in vain outside
Bush's Texas ranch in 2005, wanting to ask the president face-to-face
why her son had died in Iraq.
Being a playwright, I set to work on a play, first by transcribing the
dialogue, and soon discovered to my chagrin that once in play format,
the Lincoln-Harvey conversations amounted to barely nine pages of
script -- hardly long enough for a short one-act, let alone a
full-length piece. Nor did the material work on its own as a play
exactly. It needed another character, a sort of go-between, to fill in
gaps for an audience and serve as host. For this part I enlisted John
Hay, Lincoln's secretary. Still more was needed - rounding of
character, further layering of theme and plot, more metaphor, more
resonance to our own time. I cut, elaborated, stole, invented with
abandon. If such liberties were good enough for Shakespeare they were
good enough for me. I hope audiences will discover in
Better Angels
echoes illuminating of our own time. Mainly, though, I hope the play
will challenge the vague iconography of "the man on the penny" we've
all grown up with, so those who hear it may come away sharing some of
my enthusiasm for and curiosity about the remarkable and specific
individual who was, to our everlasting credit, our sixteenth president.
-- Wayne Peter Liebman