Grace Cavalieri had her first theater production in 1968 when Ellen Stewart opened a Baltimore branch of La Mama; 26 plays have been produced since then on American stages. She’s written libretto for two produced operas with composer Vivian Adelberg Rudow; and also two song cycles (CDs.) Cavalieri is Poet’s tenth Poet Laureate. She’s transformed three books of her poetry into plays about women in history including Anna Nicole Smith (BLOND GLORY;) Mary Wollstonecraft (HYENA IN PETTICOATS) and others. The Harriet Powers play is QUILTING THE SUN, commissioned by the Smithsonian Institution. Grace is the author of 32 books, and produces THE POET AND THE POEM for public radio, now celebrating 29 years on air. She is a painter and website is below.
Wikipedia: Grace Cavalieri
Grace Cavalieri Art - Google Sites
ABOUT THE MONOLOGUE
From my house to the Wings Theater in New York City was only a few hundred miles, but it took years to reach the destination.
Preparing a play for a professional reading takes longer than training for the Olympics. With my play “Quilting the Sun,” the writing took ten years. It took an additional two years, 2000-2002, to get the play mounted so that producers could see it.
Producer/Filmmaker William Gilcher conceived of this project and did pioneer work to uncover Harriet Powers. In 1990, the Smithsonian Institute and Gilcher’s Visual Press of the University of Maryland commissioned me to write a television screenplay inspired by a magnificent quilt, made by the former slave Harriet Powers. This hangs in the Smithsonian Institution. Harriet Powers’ quilts are closer in appearance to Picasso’s work than to the story quilts of the post Civil War South. (Another Powers quilt is owned by the Boston Museum of Art.)
Although we knew little of Powers’ life, we felt that her story should be told. The facts we knew were these: She lived from 1837 to 1911. She was married to Armstead Powers and had children. She sold her quilt to Jennie Smith, a white schoolteacher from Athens, Georgia for five dollars, half the asking price. Not enough, perhaps, to fill a 90-minute program for public television, but it was an intriguing start.
Initial research was conducted in Sandy Creek, Georgia and Athens, w producers and I unpacked mildewed boxes in the courthouse basement, beat down bushes to find the Powers’ shack and pored over Miss Jennie’s letters at the University of Georgia Library. We were guided by Gladys-Marie Fry, the scholar who brought Harriet Powers to notice in her book, Stitched from the Soul.
For two years I met with the principles of the production team, submitting draft after draft. My task was to imagine reasons Harriet might have sold her quilt. It was her lifelong project and, after all, she had always lived in poverty. Why did she need money at this particular time, and need it so badly that she relinquished a “spelled quilt,” one that (I imagined) God told her to make? The only reason I could believe was that she did it to save the life of her child. Essentially, she sold one baby for another.
This quilt by Harriet Powers hangs in the Smithsonian.
The need to buy white man’s medicine would be the reason for conflict, I decided. I would build the universe around this and populate it with characters. Five of them truly existed: Harriet Powers, her husband Armstead, her son Alonzo, Jennie Smith and the headmistress of the school where Jennie taught art, Miss Millie Rutherford. The rest I would imagine.
One crucial bit of information uncovered was that Harriet showed her quilt at the “Colored Fair” in Athens in 1886. This might have been where Jennie Smith discovered it. I narrowed my time frame to a three-year time period and began to create the world of Georgia in the South during the years 1883-1886.
When the play was complete, the search for funding began. Ten years ago, a 90-minute period piece on public television would have required at least a million dollars; we couldn’t find that amount. The producers began to spin off documentaries, hoping to recover the hard-earned material for television use.
In 2000, the copyright, according to the contract, reverted to me as the author. I did not stay up late at night waiting for this to happen, but I noticed the fact with interest, and spoke to Shela Xoregos, a New York director who had previously directed a play of mine. She suggested that I rewrite the screenplay for the stage.
Plays rarely come from film scripts, although it is common to go from theater to film. But going from film to stage presents problems in scope, point of view and the expansion of time. I didn’t know where to begin. The screenplay had a large cast of characters. It could take advantage of aerial views and panoramic scenes help tell the story. Now I needed to think vertically, not horizontally, compressing the story to fit a specific space with only the characters necessary to tell the story. I felt like Harriet might have felt ripping stitches out of her quilt.
The preliminary reading was scheduled for September 12, 2001. I approached the city on September 11 and, of course, immediately returned home. That reading was rescheduled for November 7 at the Columbia Branch Library on Tenth Avenue. This was in preparation for the showcase reading on March 15, 2002 at the Wings Theater on Christopher Street in the West Village, NYC.
For the November reading, I had whittled down the play to twelve characters and removed all material but the basic story of Harriet’s life. I thought I needed every single character on stage, and couldn’t believe it when I was told that a play with twelve characters wouldn’t find production at this time in history. Somehow I was able to kill off three, but I held the line at nine.
I don’t consider my wastebasket a holy receptacle, but it was becoming a character bigger than the others. In my office is a trunk where I had 2,000 versions of this play in its various guises. There were to be more.
The Xoregos Performing Company, which had originally encouraged me was hired to stage my reading. We sent invitations, wrote personal notes, and made phone calls. On March 15, the small theater in the West Village was filled for a showcase reading. The audience liked what it saw and heard that day, and showed its appreciation in a heartwarming way.
What did I learn? That there is more writing to be done: Two of the professional pundits at the viewing claimed the play was too episodic. (I thought it was a patch-work quilt; I liked that quality.) I had to rewrite to develop a “through-line of narration,” stitching it even more closely. Even more rewrites would occur during rehearsals.
After the March reading, four viewers requested scripts. One year later the phone still had not rung, the mailbox was empty and the clock on the wall was ticking. But I heard the voice of Harriet in my ear, telling about selling her quilt: “I didn’t lose anything. I can begin again.”
In 2003 QUILTING THE SUN was presented at the Smithsonian Institution by its NYC cast, directed by Shela Xoregos. In 2007 the play received its premiere production, Center Stage, S.C. receiving a key to the City of Greenville. The play is slated for production, 2009, in Harriet Power’s birthplace, Athens, Georgia.
And, like Harriet, I have not “lost” anything, not one moment of my life writing this. As Harriet Powers said, “God tole me to make this one.”
If you enjoy a monologue published in the BLACK WOMAN GENIUS project, we encourage you to reach out to the playwright to tell them so. If the playwright has not included an email address or website, let us know at info@nycplaywrights.org and we'll pass along your message.
EXCERPT FROM HARRIET POWERS
~ Excerpt published by permission, all rights held by the playwright.
HARRIET
See this? (Quilt in process. The Adam and Eve cutouts are pasted up on the wall.) These from Big Mama’s mama (shows stars and sun cutouts worn and bent.) But THESE are mine. My own and (shows patch 1 of quilt.) See this? Here Adam, Eve and the snake. Well, once there was no world.And God say to Adam and Eve, “I give you everything fine. I give you this big garden.” God says “Only one tree you can’t eat from, and that is that one over there. The apple tree.”
The snake come and beguile Eve and whisper inside her ear. He act real nice, but he’s really mean. He say to Eve. “Eve, LISTEN TO ME AND NOT GOD.”He say it again. “Eve, listen to me and not God.” He act real nice, and say “You are pretty, Eve.” He turns her head. She believes him. He say “GO AHEAD. Don’t listen to God, go ahead. You eat that apple if you want to. You don’t listen to God.” So she wakes up Adam.
She say “We don’t have to listen to God. I’m gonna eat that apple. You want some? Here.” She give him some and she eats a bit.