In honor of the reopening of Ford's Theatre and the bicentennial of Lincoln's birth, Ford's Theatre commissioned playwright James Still to write a new play exploring Lincoln's presidency. During the three-year journey to develop the play, Still found Lincoln daunting, inspiring, elusive and sometimes frustrating—but always captivating. Below are excerpts from Still's emails, notes and journals related to the writing of the play.

THURSDAY:  Utter despair.

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FRIDAY:  Color me... hopeful.

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SUNDAY:  No sleep in 36 hours, non-stop writing/reading.

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Found a Lincoln penny while on a run in Amsterdam.  I take that as a good sign.

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I feel like a big fat failure, but that's another personality.  Sybil and me—we're buddies.

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Writing from the South of France which might be the quietest place in the world, perfect for trying to coax Abe out of his silence.

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Sitting in Starbucks at the beach in Venice, reading love letters written by soldiers duringthe Civil War, sobbing.  Very manly of me.

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From Springfield, Illinois ... a spectacular September day ... spending the day roaming the streets, looking at anything that would have been here in the 1850s, trying to see everything through Mary and Abe's eyes.  "It sure is a pretty little town."

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From the Memphis airport... I found a Lincoln penny.

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To have a chance of writing anything that I want my name on, I've pushed myself back to that time, one foot dancing in 1862 to the beat of Lincoln's heart, the other foot dangling in the 21st century. I need both feet for my morning runs, so I've accepted that I'm fluidly moving between both worlds, which makes me pretty much a ghost in my own life.

I am in that awful/wonderful place that is familiar yet never easy, which is that I'm writing and trying not to panic, trying not to judge harshly what's coming out as I'm doing it.  You have heard all this before ... I am determined to be brave, determined to let the play emerge as its own peculiar and, hopefully, beautiful self. Flaws and all. But there it is. I may apply for a job at Starbucks.  I like the idea of free coffee and health insurance.

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I'm really tired.

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Writing on HEAVENS in an old mansion in New Orleans that was built not long before Mr. Lincoln became President ... New Orleans during the Civil War is about 10 plays in and of itself, but I am holed up in this old house, having food delivered to the door. I caught Tennessee Williams peaking through the window; he offered me a drink and a knowing smile.   If I don't sleep tonight or shave tomorrow, I will be mistaken for the Unibomber.

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The new draft: I'm too exhausted to have much of an opinion except that I know some of it is surprisingly beautiful, some of it probably boring, hopefully little of it is total s---.  But overall I think I'm on my road with Abe, and we are doing a funny awkward dance now.

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Lincoln's melancholia, his sadness, his anguish, his struggle inside—yes.  My writer's struggle is how to get on the inside of that and then bear it, bear to get up and face it every day, because there have been no days off, no time to put it away and forget about it.

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The choice to make the play really HIM, about him is key ... I just had to write, write, write ...  I knew there would be things gained by having scenes that he's not in, so that characters might talk about him, and we learn about him through others as well ... but my gut took me this way and I decided what the hell—some lucky actor is going to hate me and love me.

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It goes well, gets deeper, quicker, more shocking.

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Hurrah for love.

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Abe finally opened up to me.  Maybe I finally wore him down, because I know some of his secrets now; there are heartbreaking moments and human moments and flawed moments and angry moments, etc.  In other words, I went a long, long way toward making him human and not a sculpture in a museum.  He's kind of Shakespearean now —a great man in a huge critical moment in his life that requires his best, and of course he stumbles and eventually gets someplace not expected.

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I've worked on this play longer than most marriages last.

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I don't want to marry him, but today I've found Abe to be utterly engaging as a man, if but a little elusive—I'm hopeful I will continue to (slowly) find my way.

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March 2008
I've noodled on the play's ending for awhile, and what I've written now completes a very big cosmic circle that's both in the play and in the 155 years of history that follows the play. I hope it takes your breath away. I have been sitting with this idea for months now—long before Senator Obama was even seriously in the running for the nomination. I still don't know if he'll even get the nomination—but I'm going to go forward with my ending. Wouldn't it be amazing if he actually became President? Well. Clearly that's my lack of sleep talking.

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Email to Stephen Rayne, director of Heavens, from Lucca, Italy
Hey Stephen,  It is Sunday night, 29 June.  I think it's still 2008, though a year might have passed since I started working on this new draft.  What an amazing trip it's been this time around.  I'm attaching my "official" new draft of THE HEAVENS ARE HUNG IN BLACK—and though of course I'm nervous and anxious and, yes, probably needy—I feel very, very strong about what I've written and all the ways the play has gotten both wider and deeper.  Since we haven't worked together before, it is probably worth saying that it feels familiar—the way plays can and often do get wider and deeper.  So I'm cheered by that—because something about the way I was able to get inside of the play these past many weeks here in Italy—all that makes me feel like I'm in a kind of "emotional zone" with it.  That's what I'm always looking for, shooting for—but it's never a guarantee.  Plays can be withholding, stubborn.  This one broke open for me in ways that surprised me, saddened me, shocked me,and mystified me.

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I am so sorry that you have had to listen to my teeth chatter with anxiety about the endlessly hard work I've been doing on this new play.  I've sent off the new draft but suddenly find my heart still in a trance and my head still in the clouds of invention. Some call that "The Zone." Some call it "concentration" or "discipline." Some call it insanity; the goal, after all, is to hear voices in your head, to write them down, and to convince a lot of people of their right to exist. So now I'm like the airplane circling, running low on fuel, waiting for the fog to magically lift so it might finally make a safe landing and resume life on earth. The irony of growing older as a writer is that I can't pretend not to know what I'm in for...I know how hard it will be. The lack of naiveté is a burden, but somehow it's the deal struck with the devil as the relationship violently deepens with our own idiosyncratic process of creating, dreaming something out of nothing, trying to block out the very loud sound of others tapping a foot or two impatiently as they wait for something that has only the tiniest chance of being brilliant. I suppose it's that tiniest chance that keeps me returning to the blank page every single day. One thing for sure: it's a strange thing to do with your life.

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I know it seems like I have been only working on this play since the first moment we met ... and sadly, in some ways, that's true. I've simultaneously worked on a half dozen other projects that are all far along, but THE HEAVENS ARE HUNG IN BLACK is the hardest of all those projects, in certain ways it is the most ambitious and requires me to have the greatest faith, to be the most audacious (as in, "Of course I can write a play about Abraham Lincoln to be performed in the very theater where he was assassinated on the 200th anniversary of his birth...")  I am trying not to let my human fears stop me from taking one of the biggest artistic risks of my career.  Sorry if I sound too self-important here.  I'm just "in it"—and yes, obsessed.

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If Senator Obama wins this election, I think even old Abe would sit up and notice!

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Today I hate Abraham Lincoln.  And clearly he hates me.

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Yup, Abe turns 200 in February 2009.  I don't think he'd understand all the hoopla around this marker; I imagine it would wear him out. He has been very strange and interesting and often moving company for me these past three years of research and writing. I hope I survive him.

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I went to a Catholic church today, lit candles, and prayed to Buddha.  I asked him to tell Lincoln to stop being such a withholding a--hole and to trust me. Will see how much pull Buddha has with Presidents

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Still dancing with Abe on a daily basis (he's a tireless dance partner), and forcing myself to think more about the fall and how I might make some money, get health insurance, move and have three world premieres this coming season!  It's a good problem to have.

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The work this past month, honestly, has been a kick in the ass, but oddly inspiring too. The canvas is far from blank (unlike when you begin a play, or even when you are writing a second draft and only standing on the shoulders of a first draft) ... There is lots of guts and muscle in the play, and now lots of characters that are noisy and demanding and selfish and quite convinced that the play is about them. Mr. Lincoln, in his unique style, allows the children of his world to fight as he goes about the business of being in the very center of THE HEAVENS ARE HUNG IN BLACK.  It's all a mysterious and wonderful part of the process for me.  I am both the engine and a witness simultaneously.

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It is nearly a week since the election, and it's still on everyone's faces.  Lincoln is mentioned daily in the news.  It's all pretty eerie and wonderful.  I'm using it all as fuel for the new draft.

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Have taken a pair of scissors and cut the script into about fifty strips, and now fear I've cut out its heart by mistake.

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I've spent the last several days trying to walk around the play the way I've walked around Bernini sculptures over and over again in the Borghesi in Roma—seeing it from different vantage points, entering it from different points in the story.

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Found the heart of the play and it is beating again, as is mine.

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I also quickly want to say something about historical accuracy. Stephen: my play is probably 90% created in my imagination. I have not been a slave to facts or weighed down by history. I believe I've taken great leaps of faith (and am asking the audience to do so also) when it comes to dates, facts, characters, etc. But—and here's where you and I might differ—I do think in this situation that it's important to be true to the INTEGRITY of history. In that same way, I'm focused on being true to the integrity of Lincoln as a character. That doesn't mean he only does what we know he did—but it does mean that I'm not going to write a version of Lincoln that feels false to me. I've said this too many times, but I'm fully aware that this is MY version of Lincoln (on the page). In production, that will be a collaborated version that also includes your vision and Mr. Selby's vision of Lincoln. This might drive you crazy—but I'd like to propose that it's also one of my true strengths on this project, that I've done my homework in terms of research and am also making a play out of it. But not just any play—it's a play peculiar to its own situation. A dramatic pageant. A post-modern 19th-century dream-play.  Or maybe just its own damn thing!

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From London ... Camden Town. Old Dickens territory. Today I wish Abe hadn't died. I have some questions I'd like to ask him...

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I took the red-eye last night from Seattle ... Rehearsals finally begin in Washington. I thought I'd crash at the hotel, but it was 60 degrees, and I couldn't pass up the chance to make yet one more trip to Mecca ... Walked to the Lincoln Memorial.  In my sleep-deprived red eyes, everyone I see is wearing a black top hat. On my way to the Memorial, I find a Lincoln penny on the street. Perfect way to begin.

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Onward.