Theatre

'Not your grandfather's Abe Lincoln play'

Emmy Award-winning writer Rick Cleveland
works with students to write and stage The Rail Splitter

February 1, 2011

The first thing you should know about The Rail Splitter — the play making its world premiere at Carthage later this month — is that it was written by Emmy Award-winning writer/producer Rick Cleveland, whose television credits include The West Wing and Mad Men.

The second thing you should know about The Rail Splitter is that it's a play about Abraham Lincoln — except, really, it's not. 

Playwright Rick Cleveland, front, and director Martin McClendon, standing, laugh during a rehearsal of The Rail Splitter at Carthage Jan. 25, 2011.

"This is not your grandfather's Abe Lincoln play," said Mr. Cleveland during a visit to Carthage in late January. "If anyone comes to this thinking they're seeing an Abe Lincoln play, they're making a mistake."

Instead, the satiric docudrama-for-the-stage will "shatter your expectations of Lincoln," says director Martin McClendon, a theatre professor at Carthage. The play follows a group of college students and a writer as they attempt to write a play about the 16th president. The students begin with the best intentions but get incredibly — and hilariously — off track.

"Their efforts go so wrong, so haywire, that the results are basically disastrous," laughs Prof. McClendon. "Rick is writing this to show just how far people can get from a starting point. He's saying, 'This is what happened at Carthage College when the director lost his mind and decided to put Lincoln in drag.' "

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From West Wing to Wartburg

Rick Cleveland is a guest artist at Carthage this academic year. In addition to his Emmy Award-winning work on NBC's The West Wing, Mr. Cleveland wrote for the HBO series Six Feet Under, the AMC hit Mad Men, and the Showtime series Nurse Jackie. His screenplay credits include Runaway Jury, starring John Cusack, Gene Hackman and Dustin Hoffman; and Jerry and Tom, an official selection at the Sundance and Toronto film festivals, starring Joe Mantegna and Sam Rockwell. He's currently working on an HBO miniseries about Dick Cheney and a new movie for Steve Carell.

He's been working with Carthage students since August to write and stage The Rail Splitter, which runs Feb. 25-March 5 in Carthage's Wartburg Auditorium. (See showtimes.)

It's a play within a play, describes Herschel Kruger, chair of the Carthage Theatre Department. "It's a play about these students who are trying to write a great play about Abraham Lincoln, but there are all these rumors about who this man really was, and one becomes more ridiculous after another. The more they dig up, the more ridiculous their ideas become."

It's a satire of the docudrama genre, Prof. McClendon says. "There's a big trend in theatre these days to go in and document an event. ... But like the phenomenon in science, when you try to observe animals undetected, you invariably end up affecting their behavior."

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Characters based on Carthage students

To get started, Mr. Cleveland asked Carthage theatre students to create videos so he could meet them virtually. Students posted these video introductions to YouTube, answering his questions about their interest in theatre and career aspirations. "I said, 'Give me five minutes about you,'" Mr. Cleveland said. He then took the students' real quirks and anecdotes and worked them into the play's characters.

"It helped me make each character specific," he said. For example, "one actress said she really loves working with people but loves working with animals, too. Out of that, I came up with this young woman who just seems obsessed with the musical Cats. That's her running schtick: No matter what she's doing, she wishes she was in the musical Cats."

Carthage students aren't the only ones depicted in the play. Prof. McClendon's in there, too, along with Mr. Cleveland himself. "So I'm writing a play about a playwright with my name, working with college students with names very close to the actual students who are working on the play, and a slightly fictionalized version of Martin [McClendon]," he laughed. "The play isn't about Abraham Lincoln; it's about the play about Abraham Lincoln. And the play about Abraham Lincoln is kind of a disaster and a mess."

The subject matter was perfect for his concept, and for Carthage. Lincoln was an early Trustee of the College, and "people have seen in him whatever they want to see," McClendon says.

"Different people have appropriated Lincoln for different political agendas," added Mr. Cleveland. "There are people who have written books about him as gay. There are people who have written books about him suffering from clinical depression. There are books written about him as the 'Great Emancipator,' and there are books written about him where he was kind of a racist. ... The more books you read about Abraham Lincoln, the less you know about Abraham Lincoln.

"You could start a fist fight, I'm sure, if you got all the different facets of people who think they know Lincoln and put them in a room together."

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An opportunity "that's just golden"

For the students, working with such Mr. Cleveland is an exciting opportunity.

 "The point of our guest artist program is that students have the opportunity to work with noted professionals and see how their training matches up with what's happening in theatre right now," Prof. Kruger said. "Working on a new play is, I think, one of the most important things students can be doing. We still believe in the classics and everything they have to offer, but to be really engaged with current, notable playwrights means we're at the forefront of what's going on with theatre in our country at any level, whether it's academic or professional. It's nice to bring the two together."

Prof. McClendon agreed.

"This Emmy Award-winning writer is here — running the script, changing the script every day with these guys, handing out new pages," he said during Mr. Cleveland's January visit. "The students are getting up on their feet and doing the play for him. That's an opportunity that's just so golden for a young actor — to be originating these parts that are so closely associated with them. It's something we're just really lucky to be able to do here at Carthage."




If You Go

The Rail Splitter

Feb. 25-March 5, 2011 — Main Stage

Written by Guest Artist Rick Cleveland
Directed by Martin McClendon

Showtimes

Friday, Feb. 25 — 7:30 p.m.
Saturday, Feb. 26 — 7:30 p.m.
Sunday, Feb. 27 — 3 p.m.
Thursday, March 3 — 7:30 p.m.
Friday, March 4 — 7:30 p.m.
Saturday, March 5 — 7:30 p.m.

Tickets

$12 adults, $8 students and seniors. Special rates arranged for groups of 10 or more. For reserved seating, call the Carthage Theatre voice mail at (262) 551-6661, or send an e-mail to theatretickets@carthage.edu

Location

Wartburg Auditorium, located inside the David A. Straz Center for the Natural and Social Sciences, at the north end of Campus Drive

An Evening with the Writer

Rick Cleveland will speak at a Fine Arts Colloquium at 4 p.m. Wednesday, Feb. 23, in Wartburg Auditorium. He will talk about his writing for such television shows as "The West Wing" and "Mad Men," as well as writing his current piece, "The Rail Splitter," for Carthage. The event is open to the public.

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