Charles Busch: Backstage the Night Lincoln Was Shot

About the author:
As the author and star of such plays as The Lady in Question, Red Scare on Sunset, Psycho Beach Party, Vampire Lesbians of Sodom and Shanghai Moon, Charles Busch has created plenty of memorable stage divas. Though he chose to step out of the spotlight in his Tony-nominated hit The Tale of the Allergist's Wife starring Linda Lavin, Tony Roberts and Michele Lee and his new play, Our Leading Lady starring Kate Mulgrew, now at Manhattan Theatre Club, Busch hasn't lost his touch for writing strong and vibrant female characters. This time around, he uses the events surrounding the night Abraham Lincoln was killed at Ford's Theatre as a point of departure to comment on life in the theater—and imagines the real-life story Our American Cousin's ill-fated star, Laura Keene. The playwright shared his thoughts on his new comedy/drama with Broadway.com.

Just about the only subject in school that really interested me was history. I loved poor, foolish Marie Antoinette, who gained noble stature only through adversity, and strong, defiant Elizabeth I, who sacrificed personal happiness for her country. Then there was Abraham Lincoln: lonely, suffering from depression, but still managing great humor. Since my school days, I've read many books on Lincoln's assassination, and in their narrative of the events at Ford's Theatre on April 14, 1865, they all mention in passing that the star of the play was an actress named Laura Keene.

I always wanted to know more about Laura Keene. Was she an important actress? Where did she come from? How did the events of that horrible night affect her personally and professionally? Was this the ultimate career example of someone being in the wrong place at the wrong time?

I read several biographies of Laura Keene and learned that she was a major figure in American theater history, the first true female actor-manager in this country. She was born Mary Frances Moss in England and, after a calamitous marriage, decided to support herself and her two young daughters by going on the stage. She transformed herself into Laura Keene and made it her life's mission that the theater be a respectable place for women both on and off the stage. For a number of years, she had her own theater in New York. She instituted the first Saturday matinees so that women could attend performances unescorted. She wrote and commissioned plays, and was extremely litigious when she felt that details of her original productions were being stolen by other theatres. At the time of the assassination, she was suing John Wilkes Booth's brother-in-law, William Clarke, for copyright infringement.

She collided into history when she invited President Lincoln to her closing night performance. Earlier that week, General Lee had surrendered at Appomattox and the Civil War officially came to an end. A Presidential visit backstage must have seemed a great coup for our leading lady.

Sometimes things have a way of not working out quite the way we planned…

On September 11, 2001, I felt I'd collided into history myself when the World Trade Center Towers collapsed. I live in the West Village, and that morning I witnessed the teams of doctors waiting outside St. Vincent's Hospital for the casualties that never arrived. I stood on the pavement and applauded with the rest of my neighbors whenever a flatbed truck full of weary, ash-covered rescue workers drove up Hudson Street.

For the next few days, all of the Broadway theaters were closed and I felt very guilty worrying over the fate of my play The Tale of the Allergist's Wife. A terrorist attack couldn't destroy all of my hopes and dreams for a Broadway hit, could it? In a certain sense, perhaps, selfishness and self-absorption are handy survival tools.

I thought again about that historical footnote, Laura Keene. Wouldn't she also have been concerned with how this event would affect her career? All of the research I'd done began to paralyze my imagination, so I decided to write a fictional piece about a leading lady named Laura Keene. I invented her supporting cast and a story that had a beginning, middle and end. Many drafts later, I was pleasantly surprised at how much of my historical research actually had slipped into the play.

Freeing myself from the dictum of history allowed me to draw upon my own experiences as an actor-manager, and the outrageous fun and insanity of backstage life. From 1984 to 1992, I was the leading lady of a company called Theatre-in-Limbo. The backdrop of war that we performed against was the AIDS crisis. When young men, in the last stages of their illness, would be wheeled backstage to meet the company after a performance, I often felt like saluting them.

The biographies of Laura Keene provide no explanation as to her whereabouts during the five hours after she left the boarding house where Lincoln lay dying. Where did she go? What was she feeling? How did she pull herself together and go on? Her reputation was forever tainted by her association with the Lincoln assassination, but she would not be defeated. Although she lived only 10 more years, they were filled with a dizzying amount of creative work. Her love for the theater appears to have been inexhaustible.

That love is something I share with my heroine, and the true inspiration for this play.