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    Abraham Lincoln Goes to the Theatre
    Abraham Lincoln Goes to the Theatre
    Abraham Lincoln Goes to the Theatre
    Ebook118 pages56 minutes

    Abraham Lincoln Goes to the Theatre

    By Larry Tremblay and Chantal Bilodeau

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    About this ebook

    John Wilkes Booth assassinated Abraham Lincoln at Ford’s Theatre in Washington, D.C. Inside that theatre today, Ranger Powell of the U.S. Parks Service takes crowds of tourists, the curious and the ghoulish through a step-by-step description of the assassination. Underneath the box where Lincoln was shot, he describes the plot of the comedy Lincoln watched that night, Our American Cousin, as being “kind of like the Beverly Hillbillies.”

    Scratch the surface of any story and underneath you will find layer upon layer of fiction masquerading as fact. The play’s main character, Mark Killman—a feared but much admired director—draws inspiration from Abraham Lincoln’s assassination to stage the schizophrenia of America. He hires two actors to play Laurel and Hardy. Both are to re-enact the assassination, while he himself plays the iconic role of Abraham Lincoln as a wax figure.

    The script is frequently self-referential, building on each of these “retakes” with further allusions to itself, telling the same story many times over in different voices from different points of view. Tremblay quite explicitly stages elements of literary theory with this play, including references to Jean Baudrillard’s concept of the simulacra and the “desert of the real,” concepts first popularized by the movie The Matrix—the idea that in our post-modern world, the imitator has become more relevant than the imitated, and that the virtual worlds we construct are becoming more “real” to us than the real world.

    Absurd, hilarious and haunting, Abraham Lincoln Goes to the Theatre is an unforgettable mystery that asks the question: How can we ever know who we are and what is true when the world we know is shifting beneath us? Its answer is simple: John Wilkes Booth was the first American star—the actor who kidnapped reality to transform it into theatre.

    Cast of 3 men.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTalonbooks
    Release dateAug 15, 2010
    ISBN9780889228153
    Abraham Lincoln Goes to the Theatre
    Author

    Larry Tremblay

    Larry Tremblay is a writer, director, actor and specialist in Kathakali, an elaborate dance theatre form which he has studied on numerous trips to India. He has published more than twenty books as a playwright, poet, novelist and essayist, and he is one of Quebec’s most-produced and translated playwrights (his plays have been translated into twelve languages). The publication of Talking Bodies (Talonbooks, 2001) brought together four of his plays in English translation. He played the role of Léo in his own play Le Déclic du destin in many festivals in Brazil and Argentina. The play received a new production in Paris in 1999 and was highly successful at the Festival Off in Avignon in 2000. Thanks to an uninterrupted succession of new plays (Anatomy Lesson, Ogre, The Dragonfly of Chicoutimi, Les Mains bleues, Téléroman, among others) in production during the ’90s, Tremblay’s work continues to achieve international recognition. His plays, premiered for the most part in Montreal, have also been produced, often in translation, in Italy, France, Belgium, Mexico, Columbia, Brazil, Argentina and Scotland. In 2001, Le Ventriloque had three separate productions in Paris, Brussels and Montreal; it has since been translated into numerous languages. More recently, Tremblay collaborated with Welsh Canadian composer John Metcalf on a new opera: A Chair in Love, a concert version of which premiered in Montreal in April 2005. In 2006 he was awarded the Canada Council Victor Martyn Lynch-Staunton Award for his contribution to the theatre. He was a finalist in 2008 and 2011 for the Siminovitch Prize. One of Quebec’s most versatile writers, Tremblay currently teaches acting at l’École supérieure de théâtre de l’Université du Québec à Montréal.

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      Book preview

      Abraham Lincoln Goes to the Theatre - Larry Tremblay

      CHARACTERS

      An actor dressed like LAUREL

      An actor dressed like HARDY

      An actor dressed like a wax figure of ABRAHAM LINCOLN

      [ 1 ]

      LAUREL

      He said: I’m going to demand the impossible. I didn’t believe him. At least not at first. He probably meant: It won’t be easy. You’ll often be sorry you started on this journey.

      HARDY

      He said: You’re going to hate me, cry it’s unfair. After work, you’ll have only one desire: To go to sleep to forget what a monster I am.

      LAUREL

      I can tell you one thing: After work, the three of us going for a drink never crossed our minds.

      HARDY

      With him, there was nothing but work. I don’t remember ever asking how he felt about terrorism, non-alcoholic beer, the fate of small nations—

      LAUREL

      —where he had learned his profession, if a school, a master or a book had been important for him. Or even a film, an event. It was all very …

      HARDY

      Very …

      LAUREL

      We couldn’t …

      HARDY

      We couldn’t love a man like him.

      LAUREL

      I never touched him.

      HARDY

      Why would you have touched him? Don’t mention that kind of detail.

      LAUREL

      A detail? Not at all. I don’t know if his hands were dry or sweaty.

      HARDY

      So?

      LAUREL

      It’s important. For me. That kind of detail.

      HARDY

      Keep going.

      LAUREL

      He had mastered the art of distance. Not for superiority. More as a tool.

      HARDY

      For perspective, too. You have to get distance to aim accurately.

      LAUREL

      At the first rehearsal, without saying hello, he opened a notebook. For … fifteen minutes?

      HARDY

      At least.

      LAUREL

      For fifteen minutes, he read to us. We didn’t understand a word, right?

      HARDY

      He was reading very fast. It was about the United States. The Civil War. Confederates, Yankees, slavery, Colonel So and So, General So and So, Abraham Lincoln, the lost children of America, the tragic destiny of America—

      LAUREL

      Yes, but we didn’t understand a word. Slam! He closed the notebook.

      HARDY

      Silence.

      LAUREL

      An incredible silence. It was coming from him.

      HARDY

      Yes, the silence was coming from him. Not from us.

      LAUREL

      Not from us. No. He had also mastered the art of silence—

      HARDY

      —and had the power to completely ignore you—

      LAUREL

      —only to discover you a second later as if he were giving birth to you.

      HARDY

      He had the gift of terror like others have the gift of healing.

      LAUREL

      I wanted to be him.

      HARDY

      Don’t say that.

      LAUREL

      Why not?

      HARDY

      You’re annoying.

      LAUREL

      Keep going.

      HARDY

      I’m too good to you.

      LAUREL

      Thank you. Keep going.

      HARDY

      Slam! He closed the notebook. Then silence. A long silence. How long?

      LAUREL

      Ten minutes.

      HARDY

      At least. He’s standing. Like this.

      LAUREL

      Yes, like that. His legs spread in a strange way. Then he shouts:

      LAUREL & HARDY

      What’s this smell? Don’t play dumb, I’m talking about you two! Turn around! Turn back! You’ve looked around, you can see the extent of the damages. No? Yes? Don’t both answer at the same time. So? What’s this smell? Can’t you smell what you two little persons are fabricating on the sly? Mean, ugly little persons. The smell of holiness, is that it?

      LAUREL

      I thought: Yes, that’s it. The smell of holiness. We’re two actors. We want to be the best. To escape dying of banality, we insist on being martyrs. We want people to gouge our eyes out with a spoon. To break our fingers with a nutcracker. To rip our skin with a cheese grater. To put on display, in the centre courts of large shopping malls, our greyish remains which exude an aroma of rose, lavender or pine depending on the season and the region.

      HARDY

      Don’t exaggerate.

      LAUREL

      That’s what I thought.

      HARDY

      You’ve got a screw loose.

      LAUREL

      You don’t agree?

      HARDY

      That’s not the point.

      LAUREL

      Do you know any actor who doesn’t want to be the best of his time? Do you? We’re all willing to be martyrs to achieve—

      HARDY

      OK. Fine. Let’s keep going.

      LAUREL & HARDY

      The smell of holiness. That’s it, right? Two actors willing to do anything for an experience! Willing to dive into an abyss of stupidity or plainly assassinate their progenitor. Am I right? Willing to castrate themselves if the play requires it. If I require it. Right, you puny half-witted mutts with droopy eyes? Ah! Do you know why I chose you out of thirty of your peers? Yes? No? Not a clue? Not even the faintest idea?

      LAUREL

      No. Why us? No. I don’t know. Yes, why the two of us? Yes, why did we agree to audition with thirty of

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