Chess Pieces

Posted By Andrew Rosendorf, Playwright in Residence

*This blog is part of a series of blogs about the creation of a play for Florida Stage as part of their “Florida Cycle”, click here for the previous posts.

It has come to my attention that while I’ve chatted about the time periods in the Water Play (1928 & Present Day) I haven’t really mentioned who the characters are and the reason why these characters populate this world.

For this particular play, the characters have to allow for an exploration of the issues that have come up in my research. However, I never wanted the characters to simply become talking heads debating issues with one another. That, to me, just is not interesting drama. To me drama comes out of the human stories and conflicts that relate to the day-to-day struggles of living our daily lives. Dramatizing these struggles will allow the issues to organically rise to the surface. What this meant was that I had to really think about the characters’ roles in society and how each character can come into conflict with others.

When thinking about characters in a play I sometimes find myself thinking of the characters as if they were chess pieces on a board. If I move the Knight how does that affect my opponent’s Pawn? Or if I move the Castle vertically in front of my opponent’s Queen, what will that make the Queen do? What are the options for the next move and how will I counter that? In other words, how can my characters be placed in society in such a way to create the best possible scenario for conflict with one another.

I looked again at some of the overall water issues that I wanted to deal with. This ranged from water management to Lake Okeechobee to agriculture to drainage. It became clear that I needed at least one character to be a farmer. Why a farmer? Because a farmer is someone who is living off the land. Relying on the land for survival. For his/her family’s survival. A farmer in 1928 was at the mercy of nature. Having a character that is directly having to deal with nature and fighting the elements for a living – for survival – felt as strong a way as possible to find the human stories and conflicts that relate to the larger issues.

So, meet Eddie Wilson. The main character of the 1928 section of the play. He’s a farmer who farms right in the shadow of Lake Okeechobee in Belle Glade. He has been there for twelve years – so before the muck dike was built and when Lake Okeechobee was constantly flooding. He was there for the 1917 frost that wiped out a number of farms. He’s built his house on stilts so it would stay above flooding water. He wants to make his fortune. Right now he’s growing beans and potatoes, but has aspirations of getting into the sugar business. Eddie also owns a store in downtown Belle Glade right on the Hillsboro Canal. He’s a hard working man who thinks he has control of his situation.

After landing on Eddie as a character, the rest of the characters began to evolve and take shape. There’s Eddie’s wife, Ruthie, who has birthed children and raised them in Belle Glade. She’s supportive of Eddie, but feels that she’s reached her limit with dealing with the weather. The elements. That maybe it’s time for them to stop fighting nature and go back to a city. Go back to where there is snow. And not water in sight for miles.

There’s Jacob Gold who runs the Everglades News. He believes that the management of Lake Okeechobee has been mishandled. And the consequences have already been deadly as seen with the 1926 hurricane that caused Lake Okeechobee to burst through its dike and kill 800 people. He himself has felt a personal loss at the hand of the Lake. From a playwright perspective, having Jacob be a newspaper man allows me the opportunity for him to be able to get away with talking about some of the issues and concerns without it seeming as if the playwright is talking about the issues. It’s my goal that it feels a natural part of Jacob’s daily discourse.

There’s Noah Brooks who is a World War I veteran that has felt the impact of coming home from war, but not having the pension he was promised. He moved to South Florida with hopes of making money even though he has very little. The central story of Act I centers on a conflict between Noah and Eddie over land. A conflict that comes directly out of the lack of water during a drought.

Lastly, there’s Harriet who is 7-months pregnant and an African-American field hand who works with her family on Eddie’s land. The secrets she carries, some revealed in the first act, will affect these characters’ lives in ways they don’t expect. And be one of the ways of directly connecting the second act with the first one.

And those are the characters in the 1928 part of the play. Well, all of the characters played by actors. There is also the land and the weather that I want to become characters all their own.

The characters in the second act, the ones in present day, I haven’t pinned down quite yet. I don’t want to say much more until I know exactly what I have to say. Right now I have musings. The characters are still formulating. And while they’re formulating I’ve gone back to rereading and researching further about modern day water issues as well as taking part in a two-day module with Florida Earth about agriculture on December 10th and 11th.

Next time, I think, it might be time to start to refer to the Water Play with its working title. As always, feel free to contact me (andrew@floridastage.org) with questions, comment, and/or articles that you feel I should read. I’ve appreciated all the e-mails to this point. Namaste!

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