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6 Plays of historic New Orleans
368 Pages, illustrated.
Volume Two contains historical plays, mostly Victorian, with characters driven by stratified society and tradition. Knowledge of New Orleans history made me want to adapt Uncle Vanya. I loved the play but felt its details were too Russian. I took the bones of Vanya and put it on a plantation called Waverly, the last sugarcane plantation in Louisiana, and called my play Uncle Victor. That play won a number of awards and hooked me on historical drama. I also researched Edgar Degas' visit to New Orleans in 1872 and wrote a nine-cast show, so struck was I by all Degas' relatives who had lived with him in 1872. Degas had tried to save his Uncle's failing cotton business and create new roots in the city of his mother. He fell prey to scandal and decadence.
My plays are historically accurate. Obviously, you take a scenario and expand the story but the main facts: the births, deaths, relationships are all to the best of my knowledge correct.
I spent days visiting Kate Chopin's house in Cloutierville, La. and interviewed descendents of Chopin's lover Albert Sanpitie and town members about the scandals of her life. I researched in French and English all the books on Degas. I did similar research in New York and Paris for Beckett at Greystones Bay and John Singer Sargent and Madame X, which are loosely tied to New Orleans. A major theme in my work is the struggle of an artist, the sacrifices made to maintain sanity.
We are glad Degas did go back to Paris and paint and didn't succumb to the temptations of New Orleans. We are pleased Sargent refused to change his scorned portrait of Madame X and that Kate Chopin forged a way to raise her six children and still write.
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