Paradise Garden

By Lucia Frangione

In the gold-rush era of the 1850s, the McKinnons settled on an island off the west coast of Canada, where the first thing they did was to turn this “wilderness” into an English country garden complete with vegetables, flowers, fruit trees and an elegant gazebo. After six generations, times and circumstances have changed, the family estate has been subdivided, the flowers have gone wild, the pear-tree has rotted and the heritage house has been carved up into a duplex, the property now divided in two by an ugly hedge.

The McKinnons now live in one side of the property, while the other has been sold to an immigrant family recently arrived from Turkey. The heirs apparent to both families, Day McKinnon and Leyla Zeki, fancy themselves to be sophisticated citizens of the world, tolerating with thinly disguised amusement their ancestors’ “outdated” formalities and rituals. So alienated are they that they spend much of their time only half-jokingly speaking of themselves in the third person. Yet Leyla recognizes something fundamental and mysterious in the vestiges of the old garden: its tumbled and overgrown ruins remind her of the Paradise Garden of Judeo-Christian/Islamic tradition—its layout in the four cardinal directions, its allusions to the seasons and the elements, and its walls that surround a place of secret love. For Day, however, despite, or perhaps because of the fact that he has discovered a long-buried family secret, “The problem with being born into paradise is: eventually you inherit it. There’s something to be said for the bedlam of hell. Heaven is a lot of upkeep.” Abandoning their families for their careers, they are reunited years later having discovered that love is not just something that happens to us, but something that we must build by hand in the wilderness of our lives.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Talonbooks
• Release date: Mar 15, 2011
• ISBN: 9780889228214

Lucia Frangione

Lucia Frangione is an internationally produced, award-winning playwright and actor. Grazie is her debut novel. She is the winner of the Sydney Risk playwriting award, the Gordon Armstrong playwriting award, the CAEA emerging artist award and the NY Unknown Country award, and she is among the top three on the Flannery List (as featured in American Magazine, October 5, 2021). Her thirty-three plays have been produced across Canada and in cities like London, Warsaw, San Diego, Boston, and Chicago. She is a member of ACTRA and CAEA. Lucia is currently working on a sequel to Grazie and is also developing a play called Danger to Self and Others with Touchstone Theatre. She lives in Vancouver with her husband and two children. www.luciafrangione.com

Book preview

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Contents

Cover

First Production Notes

Paradise Garden Inhabitants

The Garden

The Right Time, The Right Place

Act One

Scene One

Scene Two

Scene Three

Scene Four

Act Two

Scene One

Scene Two

Scene Three

Act Three

Scene One

Scene Two

Scene Three

Other Books by Lucia Frangione

Copyright Information

Many thanks to Maxine, Mille, Jayne and Michael Kopsa, Joe Frangione, Onurhan Ulutan, Laurren Iacobellis, Pinar Ozdemir, and Colleen McLaughlin Barlow for inspiration. Rachel Ditor, Bill Millerd, Stan and Kathy Hamilton for their tremendous support.

This play is dedicated to Jeremy Tow. See you in Paradise my friend.

Paradise Garden world premiered at the Stanley Industrial Alliance Theatre, Vancouver, BC, Canada. Artistic director: Bill Millerd. Directed by Morris Ertman, dramaturged by Rachel Ditor, stage managed by Pamela Jakobs, set design by Ted Roberts, sound design by Luke Ertman, lighting design by Gerald King, costume design by Rebekkah Sorensen, with the following cast:

DAY: Kevin MacDonald

JEAN: Gina Chiarelli

LEYLA: Lucia Frangione

KEITH: Michael Kopsa (Day’s dad)

MUSTAFA: Richard Newman

LILY: Eleanora Lynne Kopsa (Day’s child)

ERGÜL: Marie Stillin

KAYLEE: Meghan Gardiner

Paradise Garden was commissioned by The Arts Club Theatre, Vancouver, BC, thanks to the Silver Commissions initiative. It was further developed with the support of the Banff Centre Playwrights Colony.

Paradise Garden Inhabitants

DAY: 27, lanky, shaggy, West Coast Canadian. The garden keeper. He’s earthy, warm, rebels with charm. He’s an unlikely poet. He actively sees, names and speaks the beauty around him to save it from dying unseen. The poet’s conceit can be exhausting and painful. He is constantly aware of his responsibility.

LEYLA: 33, Turkish, modest, curvy, a bit of a slouch. Turkish accent with a hint of England. The new neighbour. She defers to her parents with an old world respect. If she is hurt, angry or disappointed, she expresses this with brisk wit and a smile, never with belligerence. She wants to make everything beautiful for her mother.

KAYLEE: 19, a local small town girl who wears brightly coloured sports bras, you know, just in case she goes rock climbing later. Genuine. Too eager to please.

ERGÜL: 57, Turkish, soulful elegant scholar, in last stages of palliative care for cancer, Leyla’s mother. Puts on a brave face. Very proud woman.

JEAN: 50, chirpy redhead who knows she’s a real card. Day’s mom. Underneath her bravado is loneliness, great hope for better things and an immense love for her son.

MUSTAFA: 63, Turkish, a small man who makes up for his size in kingly presence. Leyla’s father. Brusque. His smiles are like saffron: a dry red stigma plucked from a thorny centre.

The Garden

Ideally the garden is non-literal and yet capable of transformation. If you would like an idea of how to stage it: a view of the garden on an angle, mostly the Zekis’ side of the property; the East suite, stage left. The Zekis have a large upper window that overlooks the garden and a door with stairs that lead down to the garden. A tall poxed pear tree is stage left and its large raised roots gnarl around towards centre stage to form a kind of seating area, rather than literal patio furniture. There is a walkway that leads towards the dock on the McKinnons’ side.

A large hedge, about four-and-a-half feet tall, divides the East and West suites and its line runs in a slight diagonal, its end swinging towards the stage right side with a break in the middle of the hedge where an old circular fountain is shared between the suites. The hedge ends a little short down stage. The land extends past it a bit before dipping down into the ocean. This bluff is where the burial site is. Therefore, what we see of the McKinnons’ side of the property is a hint of their house, their head and shoulders over the hedge, the top of their fig tree, the fountain through the hedge’s divide, and a bit of green past the end of the hedge and a dock extended out into the ocean. Day hoists himself out from the ocean and onto the dock from the stage right side of it. In the third act, when the hedge is removed, it reveals the wonder and glory that is the transformed garden. The Colleen McLaughlin Barlow crystal sculpture must not be literally represented without her permission. Her story is a real story and the sculpture mentioned is an actual piece.

The Right Time, The Right Place

It’s around 2006, summer. The second act is 2008, summer. The third act is 2010, summer. The garden is attached to an oceanfront estate on one of the smaller Gulf Islands, West Coast of Canada.

Act One

Scene One

DAY shuffles into a shaft of moonlight at the end of the dock. He takes this evening in and deliciously unfolds his inner poet. This is one of his favourite things: to rediscover the garden and ponder his place in it.

DAY:

Enter a young man by the name of Day. Scruffy, puffy eyed, he’s mostly comfortable wearing brown. He is aware of the fact that speaking of himself in the third person is a sign of existential angst. And though Day