The Dead of Spoon River
A Dramatic Adaptation of Edgar Lee Masters' Spoon River Anthology in Two Acts
Adapted for the Stage by
James M. Kemp
1627 Goldcrest AVE NW
Salem, OR 97304
Phone: (503) 385-1154
Cellular: (503) 949-6776
E-mail:
Copyright 2017 James M. Kemp
Cast of Characters
Male 1 :a young male in his late teens or early twenties.
Male 2 :a young male in his late twenties or early thirties.
Male 3:amale in his forties.
Male 4 :an older male in his fifties or sixties.
Female 1 : a young femalein her teens or early twenties.
Female 2 : a young female, in her late twenties or early thirties.
Female 3 : a female in her forties.
Female 4 : a femalein her fifties or sixties.
Time
It is midnight in a Midwestern cemetery. The costumes and props would have been common to the late nineteen hundreds or early twentieth century.
Setting
In the opening scene, the stage is dark. The only decorations consist of three window frames which hang from the fly loft. One suggests the concept of church. One suggests government. One suggests home. The glass in the windows is sprayed in order to avoid reflecting light.
There four rice paper-covered screens which are moveable. These are simple, wood-framed screens with wooden struts to hold them upright. Each has a shelf built into the back side for holding props. They are used to divide the stage into various acting areas, as well as to serve as flats which can be used by characters to change into incidental costume pieces from behind the screens. The fronts of the screens are used as surfaces for projecting images relating to the various characters. There is a full-sized rear projection screen on the back stage wall.
The center stage contains a bier made of common saw horses for receiving
the casket carried in during Act I and as gallows platform during Act 2.There is a small set of steps next to the bier and a battery-operated lantern. There are pegs on the walls all around the set which hold the props to be used by the actors.
I-1-1
Act 1
Scene 1
At Scene Opening -
The scene opens with the four screens set up across the stage. Characters enter from rear stage doors with four entering from each side. They take places behind the screens with two characters per screen. One by one, battery-operated candles are individually lit from behind each screen. The movements of characters can be discerned as shadows behind the screens.
Characters in front of the candles move in imploring, beckoning gestures as they recite The Hill. To achieve this effect, it will probably be necessary thatfour actors light candles while four actors stand between the screens and the
others, casting reflections onto the backs of the screens.
The sound of water running by as from a stream can be heard in the background
and then fades.
Female I
(She steps from behind a screen and carries one lit candle.)
Where are Elmer, Herman, Bert, Tom and Charley, the weak of will, the strong of arm, the clown, the boozer, the fighter?
Cast
(They speak in unison from behind the screens.)
All, all, are sleeping on the hill.
I-1-2
Male 1
(He steps from behind a screen and carries one lit candle.)
One passed in a fever. One was burned in a mine,
Female 2
(She steps from behind a screen and carries one lit candle.)
One was killed in a brawl.One died in a jail,
Male 2
(He steps from behind a screen and carries one lit candle.)
One fell from a bridge toiling for children and wife.
Cast
All, all are sleeping, sleeping, sleeping on the hill.
Female 3
(She steps from behind a screen and carries one lit candle.)
Where are Ella, Kate, Mag, Lizzie and Edith, The tender heart, the simple soul, the loud, the proud, the happy one?
Cast
All, all, are sleeping on the hill.
Male 3
(He steps from behind a screen and carries one lit candle.)
One died in shameful childbirth. One of a thwarted love,
Female 3
One at the hands of a brute in a brothel. One of a broken pride, in the search for heart's desire.
I-1-3
Male 4
(He steps from behind a screen and carries one lit candle.)
One after life in far-away London and Paris was brought to her little space by Ella and Kate and Mag.
Cast
All, all are sleeping, sleeping, sleeping on the hill.
Female 4
(She steps from behind a screen and carries one lit candle.)
Where are Uncle Isaac and Aunt Emily, and old Towny Kincaid and Sevigne Houghton?
Malel
And Major Walker who had talked with venerable men of the revolution?
Cast
All, all, are sleeping on the hill.
Female 1
They brought them dead sons from the war, and daughters whom life had crushed.
Male 2
And their children fatherless, crying.
Cast
All, all are sleeping, sleeping, sleeping on the hill.
I-1-4
Female 2
Where is Old Fiddler Jones who played with life all his ninety years?
Male 3
Braving the sleet with bared breast, drinking, rioting, thinking neither of wife nor kin.
Female 3
Nor gold, nor love, nor heaven? Lo! He babbles of the fish-fries of long ago.
Male 4
Of the horse-races of long ago at Clary's Grove,
Female 4
Of what Abe Lincoln said one time at Springfield.
(All characters fill the stage as the ones who had remained behind the screens without the candles help the others to move the screens, with two to stage right and two to stage left with the bier visible center stage. All candles have been blown out and placed on a prop shelf built into the back side of each screen.
During this movement, the cast sings, "Raise Your Hands If They Are Clean").
I-2-5
Scene 2-
(Still singing, with rhythm becoming more dirge-like, six cast members pick up the casket from downstage right. Male 2 and Male3 move with the casket. Male 3picks up a battery powered lantern which has been set beside the bier. The whole procession marches to center stage where they place the casket on the bier.
After the casket is placed on the bier, Male 2is assisted by Male 3 up a small set of stairs into the casket where Male 2 sits upright with his arms folded across his chest.
As Male 3 carries his lantern out toward the audience and peers at them in the darkness, the remaining cast surrounds the casket in a frieze. Male 3walks to downstage center andsets the lantern on the edge of the stage. He walks out into the audience and picks one audience member and asks that person to stand up (it may be done with a "planted" troupe member).
Male 3 takes a tape measure from his pocket and begins to size up the audience member. He then signals the audience member to be seated, returns to the stage with the lantern and measures the casket, nods his head knowingly and grins as he stares back at the audience member.
The remaining cast move behind their screens.
A spotlight comes up on Male 3. He seems to
be slightly startled by it, like an inmate who has just been discovered outside the prison walls.
Male 3
In life, my name was Jeduthan Hawley. And I remember there would be a knock at the door, and I would arise at midnight and go to the shop, where belated travelers would hear me hammering sepulchral boards and tacking satin. And often I wondered who would go with me to the distant land, our names, the theme for talk, in the same week. For I've observed two always go together. Chase Henry was paired with Edith Conant; and Jonathan Somers with Willie Metcalf; and Editor Hamblin with Francis Turner, when he prayed to live longer than Editor Whedon. And Thomas Rhodes with widow McFarlane; and Emily Sparks with Barry Holden; and Oscar Hummel with Davis Matlock; and Editor Whedon with Fiddler Jones; and Faith Matheny with Dorcas Gustine. And I, the solemnest man in town, stepped off with Daisy Fraser.
I-2-6
(Spotlight dims. Male 3recedes behind front screen, stage left. A spotlight comes up on center stage right. A wildlaugh comes from behind the front screen right. Female 3 steps out twirling an ornate parasol.)
Female 3
(laughs wildly)
Daisy Fraser. Yep. That was me alright! But say, did you ever hear of Editor Whedon giving to the public treasury any of the money he received for supporting candidates for office? Or for writing up the canning factory to get people to invest? Or for suppressing the facts about the bank, when it was rotten and ready to break?
Did you ever hear of the Circuit Judge helping anyone except the "Q" railroad, Or the bankers? Or did Rev. Peet or Rev. Sibley give any part of their salary, earned by keeping still, or speaking out as the leaders wished them to do, to the building of the water works?
But I, Daisy Fraser who always passed along the streets through rows of nods and smiles, and coughs and words such as "there she goes",never was taken before Justice Arnett without contributing ten dollars and costs to the school fund of Spoon River!
(Female 3 struts back toward right front screen and passes Male 4 as he emerges from behind right rear screen and laughs at him as he looks sheepishly away. Female 3 walks behind the screen. Male 4 carries a newspaper rolled up under one arm. Male 4 takes center stage as spotlight focuses on him.)
I-2-7
Male 4
(Carries a rolled up newspaper which he slaps on one forearm with the opposite hand.)
In life, I was called Editor Whedon. To be able to see every side of every question; To be on every side, to be everything, to be nothing long; to pervert truth, to ride it for a purpose; to use great feelings and passions of the human family for base designs, for cunning ends; to wear a mask like the Greeks actors.Your eight-page paper, behind which you huddle, bawling through the megaphone of big type, "This is I, the giant."
Thereby also living the life of a sneak-thief, poisoned with the anonymous words of your clandestine soul. To scratch dirt over scandal for money, and exhume it to the winds for revenge. Or to sell papers, crushing reputations, or bodies, if need be. To win at any cost, save your own life; to glory in demoniac power, ditching civilization, as a paranoiac boy puts a log on the track and derails the express train.
To be an editor, as I was, then to lie here close by the river over the place where the sewage flows from the village, and the empty cans and garbage are dumped, and abortions are hidden.
(Spotlight dims center stage. Male 4 moves back behind the screen from which he emerged.
Female 1 emergesfrom behind left rear screen. She wears a shawl which hangs from her loosely. She edges her way around thescreen as if peeking from behind it at first and then stands next to it as spotlight comes up on her.)
Female 1
They called me Minerva, the village poetess. Hooted at, jeered at by the Yahoos of the street for my heavy body, cock-eye, and rolling walk. And all the more when "Butch" Weldy captured me after a brutal hunt. He left me to my fate with Doctor Meyers;
and I sank into death, growing numb from the feet up, like one stepping deeper and deeper into a stream of ice.
Will someone go to the village newspaper, and gather into a book the verses I wrote?
I thirsted so for love! I hungered so for life!
(Spotlight dims. Male 3 emerges from behind left front screen. He carries a satchel. He moves back and stands in the light which comes up next to where Female 1still stands. He ignores Female 1 who has moved so as to face away from him.Male 3 moves to center stage as spotlight comes up on him. Female 1 moves shyly back behind her screen.)
I-2-8
Male 3
In life, I was Doctor Meyers. No other man, unless it was Doc Hill, did more for people in this town than I. And all the weak, the halt, the improvident, and those who could not pay flocked to me. I was good-hearted, easy Doctor Meyers. I was healthy, happy, in comfortable fortune, blest with a congenial mate, my children raised, all wedded, doing well in the world. And then one night, Minerva, the poetess, came to me in her trouble, crying.
I tried to help her out. She died. They indicted me. The newspapers disgraced me.
My wife perished of a broken heart, and pneumonia finished me.
(Spotlight dims on Male 3. Female 2 emerges from front screen right, walks to the other side of Male 3 center stage. He is unaware of her as he recedes behind his screen. Female 2carries a large Bible. Spotlight come up on Female 2.)
Female 2
I was a doctor's wife, Mrs. Meyers. He protested all his life long. The newspapers lied about him villainously; that he was not at fault for Minerva's fall; but only tried to help her.
Poor soul so sunk in sin he could not see that even trying to help her, as he called it,
he had broken the law human and divine.
(Pats her Bible, grins and shakes her head.)
Passersby, an ancient admonition to you: if your ways would be ways of pleasantness,
and all your pathways peace, love God and keep his commandments.
(Lights dim. Spot comes up center stage. Female 2 recedes behind her original screen. Male 2 emerges from
within the casket. He feels his way out of the casket slowly. It becomes obvious that he cannot see. He wears smoked eyeglasses. He starts to walk away from the casket, stops thoughtfully, returns to the casket and retrieves a white cane from inside it. He then walks into the light, as he feels for its heat.)
I-2-9
Male 2
Folks called me"Butch". Butch Weldy that was.
After I got religion and steadied down, they gave me a job in the canning works, And every morning I had to fill the tank in the yard with gasoline, that fed the blow-fires in the sheds to heat the soldering irons.
And I mounted a rickety ladder to do it, carrying buckets full ofthe stuff.
One morning, as I stood there pouring, the air grew still, and seemed to heave. And I shot up as the tank exploded, and down I came with both legs broken, and my eyes burned crisp as a couple of eggs.
For someone left a blow-fire going, and something sucked the flame in the tank. The Circuit Judge said whoever did it was a fellow-servant of mine. And so Old Rhodes' son didn't have to pay me. And I sat on the witness stand as blind as Jack the Fiddler, saying over and over, "I didn't know him at all."
(Male 1 also walks out from front screen left. He also wears smoked glasses, and carries a white cane. He stands next to Male 2 and feels around for the heat of the light. Male 2 turns away from him and steps out of the light and behind a screen, as Male 1 steps into it.)
Male 1
In life, they called me Blind Jack.
I had fiddled all day at the county fair. But driving home "Butch" Weldy and Jack McGuire, who were roaring full, made me fiddle and fiddle to the song of Susie Skinner, while whipping the horses till they ran away.
Blind as I was, I tried to get out as the carriage fell in the ditch,
And was caught in the wheels and killed.
There's a blind man here with a brow as big and white as a cloud.
And all we fiddlers, from highest to lowest, writers of music and tellers of stories,
Sit at his feet, and hear him sing of the fall of Troy.
I-2-10
(Lights dim as Male 1 returns to his screen. Female 2 enters from behind her screen. She carries a stack of books clutched to her bosom. She wanders slowly toward upstage right. Lights up right.)
Female 2
I allowed my students to call me Miss Emily Sparks
Where is my boy, my boy? In what far part of the world?
The boy I loved best of all in the school.
I, the teacher, the old maid, the virgin heart, who made them all my children.
Did I know my boy aright, thinking of him as spirit aflame, active, ever aspiring?
Oh, boy, boy, for whom I prayed and prayed in many a watchful hour at night. Do you remember the letter I wrote you of the beautiful love of Christ?
And whether you ever took it or not, my boy, wherever you are,
Work for your soul's sake, that all the clay of you, all of the dross of you,
may yield to the fire of you,tillthe fire is nothing but light! Nothing but light!
(Male 2 enters from his screen and saunters downstage left. Lights up downstage left. He carries an open book as if he has been reading from it.)
Male 2
I was always with you, Miss Emily Sparks. Your Reuben Pantier.