Interesting Day at the Old Surratt Hacienda

[L Verge]

On Sunday, I received an email at home from one of my weekend staff members alerting me to the probability that a theatrical production company would be at Surratt House at 8 am on Wednesday (today) to take photos of the exterior and grounds. I responded to the email address that I was given and welcomed them.

I did not hear back, but when I arrived at work this morning, there were at least 16 actors and actresses in period garb on the lawn. They are putting the final touches on a production based on Mary Surratt and the Lincoln assassination and were using our house and grounds for publicity purposes - posters, videos, still shots, and more. I greeted everyone from Mary and Anna Surratt, Nora Fitzpatrick, Louis Weichmann, John Matthews, JAG Holt, and Aunt Rachel Hawkins.

The actor playing Matthews had never seen a picture of Booth's friend. We grabbed Tom Bogar's wonderful book and showed him Matthews.The gentleman playing Frederick Aiken did not know much of the lawyer's history because there is very little published on him except for the outstanding work done by Christine Christensen. I quickly located a copy of the Surratt Courier that carried the lengthy bio of Aiken and made a young actor very happy.

The young man playing Weichmann is having a hard time deciphering that figure's personality and is trying to determine whether to portray him as firm and upright or scared and vindictive. Aunt Rachel told me that she found reference to the former slave living to be 125. I have my doubts, but she promised to send me the citation. The last info we had on Rachel was from an Evening Star interview back in 1892. She was an invalid confined to bed at that time. From what we can determine, Rachel and Mary Surratt were about the same age. That would make Rachel about 75 in 1892. Living another fifty years seems rather unlikely.

I was very impressed with how much reading most of the young people had done on the subject and on their respective characters. Several were perturbed that the playwright had inserted some wrong history, and they were being forced to repeat it. For a change, I kept my opinions to myself...

They remained on site until about 2 pm, in costume most of the time, except for when they took a Subway lunch break in our picnic area. Our temperatures and humidity were in the 80s today, so they got a good feel for what our ancestors endured.

When they left, they were headed to Georgetown to find some cobbled stone streets to work with. I suspect some Georgetown bars were making beer money off of them by 4 pm.

Tomorrow, they head back to home base in NYC. I don't have the title of this play yet, but they promised to keep us updated. They will be back in D.C. in July for a trial performance at the Atlas Theatre. Then it's back to New York for an off-Broadway showing. They call themselves The Wandering Theatre Company, so watch for them. I also passed along some email addresses for some of our scholars that I thought might be of help on short notice if needed.