What do Abe Lincoln and Agatha Christie have in common? Let me rephrase that: what do actors who have portrayed both historical figures have in common? Both have used advanced technologies to help make their performances more believable and interesting to modern audiences. Let’s take a closer look at what is going on.

Last week, the NYTimes wrote a piece about a new series of lectures available on the BBC’s Maestro series delivered by Christie. Well, by the actress Vivian Keene who plays the part of the noted author and playwright. The lectures, which are available as a series here, are designed to teach you how to write fiction, and in particular crime fiction. They were assembled from her words and writings over her career, including the specifics of how she chooses her plots and characters. The lectures are supplemented with a variety of written exercises and other materials, and here you can watch an introductory episode for free. Otherwise, you need to pay about $90 for the whole lot. Keene is just one of many dozens of contributors that helped pull this production together. And what you hear is not her own voice but speech which has been altered by an AI tool to make it sound more like Christie. (BTW, there are a number of these tools available, such as from ElevenLabs.io, Hume.ai, and ReplicaStudios.com, just to name a few that I have used.)

I found the first few minutes of the freebie lecture interesting, but then my attention waned and I thought this wasn’t very compelling. Perhaps because I try not to write fiction I wasn’t really interested in spending the dough and watching the paid lectures. But I did like the fact that the underlying tech isn’t really all that noticeable, which I guess is the whole point of the BBC exercise.

It reminded me of watching Hal Holbrook play Mark Twain for many decades. Indeed, when you think of what Twain looked like, you probably recall the image of one of Holbrook’s performances. But he wasn’t trying to teach us anything about how Twain wrote his books, just entertain us.

Let’s move on to Lincoln and a production called “Ghosts of the Library” at his own presidential museum in Springfield, Ill. I saw it many years ago. To be accurate, Lincoln is not the star attraction of the show, who instead is an actor playing a librarian and who explains his craft. What is interesting about this live performance is that it makes use of a variety of technologies, one of which dates back to the Civil War era, to project holographic images on a glass panel which separates the set from the audience. (Back then the projections used candlepower rather than electricity.)

At the Lincoln museum, the technology is also not immediately apparent, and when I saw the show I was accompanied by the PR person who took time to explain it to me and introduce me to the actor. The show depends on split-second timing and the ability of the actor to hit his marks exactly so that he matches up with the projected images.

The other exhibits at the Lincoln museum are notable in how they used various tech trickery, something that I wrote about for a 2008 piece in the NYTimes. For example, when entering the room containing the exhibit about Lincoln’s death, the thermostats are set to cool the room so you feel a bit of a chill.

Tech will continue to improve the audience experience to be sure. The real effort is to make it part of the production background, and to do that right requires a lot of time and effort and expertise. If you do sign up for the BBC lectures, do let me know what you think.