WITH THE POSSIBLE EXCEPTION OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN to Make Edinburgh Fringe Debut

David Chocron, the Oslo-based multidisciplinary artist, will premiere his new play With the Possible Exception of Abraham Lincoln, at this year's Edinburgh Festival Fringe at Forest Theatre at Greenside @ George Street (Venue #236) from the 7th-29th August 2026.

Written and directed by David Chocron, with a cast to be announced soon, the alternative reality drama imagines an extraordinary intervention on the eve of Donald Trump's election defeat in 2020. 

On that fateful night in the Lincoln Bedroom, with the election in the balance, a sleepless Trump encounters a tall lawyer from Illinois. This enigmatic visitor charms and challenges Trump, finally doing what no living person seems capable of doing: wrestling truth out of Trump, in an attempt to avert a constitutional crisis at sunrise.

The dramatic two-hander explores issues of race and identity, inspired by Abraham Lincoln's prescient Lyceum Address from 1837, where he warned of the potential for a dictatorship in America.

Presented with video design and music by the playwright himself, Chocron has collaborated in an array of roles with some of the most recognisable names in the arts and entertainment world. As composer and conductor, his compositions have been recorded by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. As screenwriter and director he has collaborated with Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jean-Michel Cousteau on the environmental documentary Wonders of the Sea, which debuted at the Cannes Film Festival in 2017. As a video artist and director he has earned international awards for two of his productions with the Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra.

And this is not the first time Chocron tackles political and social issues in his work. His play from 2010, Guantanamo, What Now, performed by Nordic Black Theatre at the Norwegian Opera, was a blistering critique of the George W. Bush presidency and the infamous US detention center in Cuba. He commented on the first election of Trump in 2017 with his commissioned work HeavyLight, a massive video installation on four cement silos located on the shores of the Oslo Fjord. He has written and performed parodies of former vice president Al Gore, historian Yuval Noel Harari and the late Ayatollah Khamenei.

David Chocron, the creator of With the Possible Exception of Abraham Lincoln, said: 'During the campaign of 2020 I saw a press conference where President Trump said, in all sincerity, “I've done more for Black Americans than anybody, with the possible exception of Abraham Lincoln”.  Possible?!  My mind exploded. In a flash the scenario for this play appeared before me: Trump's reckoning at the hands of Abraham Lincoln. A perfect match – two diametrically opposed personalities, and presidents, in every way: the corruption, vulgarity and vengefulness of Trump versus the integrity, eloquence and magnanimousness of Lincoln.' 

'Lincoln warned us in 1837 that “a man possessed of the most extreme ambition would spring up amongst us and push the institution of the presidency to its breaking point.” And when that time came, he begged us to be “intelligent enough to successfully prevent [the tyrant's] schemes.” Lincoln speaks to us from the past, telling us we need to be sufficiently smart and vigilant to avoid forfeiting our democracy and civil liberties to a despot. That warning, written over twenty years before his own presidency, is, for the first time in American history, urgently relevant. And not only in America. The struggle between the two archetypes presented in this piece is playing out in countries around the globe – including this one.' 

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