Refraction of Light

By Jean Klein

On the day World War II ends, another war begins.  Joe Taylor, an African-American veteran decides he wants to marry Nettie French, a childhood sweetheart, and buy the house belonging to Rose Beauchamp. Rose is a white teacher who has befriended both Nettie and Joe and encouraged their friendship and academic aspirations. Rose's prejudice rears its head and her reluctance to sell her house to Joe sets in motion a chain of events that threatens to destroy all their futures. Harry Rosen, a Jewish immigrant from Nazi Germany, enters their lives and helps them find their way home.

 

The setting is the living room of a graceful old home in Berkley, Virginia.  A stained glass window made by Nettie's mother, Lily, as a gift to Rose, is a designer's delight.    Lily combined pieces of glass from baby bottles, eye-glasses, plates, and jewelry to create a symbol of the play's multicultural mix.  Through this window, Rose, Nettie, Joe, and Harry find comfort, joy, pain, redemption; and, finally, the reality of their own prejudices.

Following the death of her mother in 1938, Nettie French, smart, sassy, African American and age 16, finds a new home with her mother's friend, Rose Beauchamp, a white, Southern teacher in Berkley, Virginia who enhances the education of young African Americans in her home.

In Act 1, Nettie finds the love of her life, Joe Taylor, and a friendship with a Jewish refugee from Hitler's Germany. Joe returns from World War II, mature and changed by his experiences as a soldier. Joe upsets the equilibrium when he wants to buy Miss Beauchamp's house and marry Nettie; Rose can't adjust to changing racial and social norms and equivocates about the sale; In an impulsive rage, Joe leaves to pursue college and a career, assuming Nettie will follow him in a few days. Nettie, however, is pregnant and disappears, not wanting to hinder Joe's life.

Joe's first year in college is unsuccessful, and he returns to Berkley to find Nettie, only to discover that she is missing, and Harry now resides in the house to take care of Rose Beauchamp, who is failing both physically and mentally.

Her decline has been exacerbated by her own guilt leading to the disappearance of Nettie; her decline is further exacerbated when she learns that Nettie was pregnant when she left. Joe doesn't know if he can ever forgive Nettie, everything about the house reminds him of her.

The house brings up memories for Harry, too, memories he is still too haunted by and too ashamed to share.

 

Ultimately, Nettie hears that Joe is looking for her and returns to the only home she has ever known, having lost her child in childbirth, to find Joe. The loss has changed Nettie; she is no longer the naïve and trusting girl planning to follow her Prince Charming.

 

She is a woman who has faced the worst life has to offer and survived and now must face revealing the loss of their child to Joe. At first glad to find Nettie, Joe is mortally wounded to discover that he has had and lost a child without ever knowing about it; he doesn't know if he can forgive Nettie for keeping that from him.

In the final scene, Rose, delusional, hears the argument and enters but "sees" both Joe and Nettie as they appeared in Scene 1, teenagers arriving for their lessons at her desk. Joe tries to confront Rose with reality, but Nettie goes along with the fantasy. Finally, Joe must decide whether to hang on to his own view of the world, which has him at the center or to join Rose and Nettie in a "lesson" in front of the window.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Blue Moon Plays
• Release date: Jun 21, 2020
• ISBN: 9781943416509

Jean Klein

Jean Klein, a playwright, editor, and publisher, has been a semi-finalist in the O’Neill competition, and is currently co-director of the Virginia Playwrights Forum. Her degrees are a B.A. from Carnegie-Mellon and an M.A and M.F.A. from the University of Iowa. A full-length play Unreasonable Possession was produced as a staged reading at the Earl Hamner Theatre in Nelson County, Virginia; a short play, Lifeswap was produced at The Venue on 35th in Norfolk, Virginia in 2012 and at The Edge Theater in Belle Haven, Virginia. Two plays, Lifeswap and Priming The Pump have been filmed for airing by Cox Cable in Virginia and North Carolina. A one-act play “Snapshots” was a winner in the Kernodle Play competition was produced in August of 2014 at The Venue in Norfolk, VA, and at The American Theatre in Hampton, VA. A full-length play Refraction Of Light was produced by Looking Glass Productions at The Venue for the Norfolk Summer PlayFest; had a staged reading at Playwrights Night at Wilkes University; and a subsequent staged reading by Transcendence Theatre Company in NYC.  A new play, Generous Rivals, was produced by Zeider’s American Dream Theatre in Virginia Beach and had a staged reading at Wilkes University in 2020. She is also the founder and owner of HaveScripts/Blue Moon Plays, a dramatic publishing company for new plays and spoken word poetry and fiction which explores social/political issues and challenges, as well as providing new scripts for the high school, college, community theater, senior performer market.

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Refraction of Light

By Jean Hughes Klein

Published by

Blue Moon Plays, LLC

www.havescripts.com

C0PYRIGHT The Refraction of Light © Jean Klein, 2019

All rights reserved.

CAUTION: Professionals and amateurs are hereby warned that performance of Refraction of Light is subject to payment of a royalty unless written permission is given waiving such fee. The Play is fully protected under the copyright laws of the United States of America, and of all countries covered by the International Copyright Union (including the Dominion of Canada and the rest of the British Commonwealth), and of all countries covered by the Pan-American Copyright Convention, the Universal Copyright Convention, and the Berne Convention, and of all countries with which the United States has reciprocal copyright relations. All rights, including professional/amateur stage rights, motion picture, recitation, lecturing, public reading, radio broadcasting, television, video or sound recording, all other forms of mechanical or electronic reproduction, such as CD-ROM, CD-I, DVD, information storage and retrieval systems and photo-copying, and the rights of translation into foreign languages, are strictly reserved. Particular emphasis is placed upon the matter of readings, permission for which must be secured from the Author in writing. 

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ISBN: 978-1-943416-50-9/Blue Moon Plays

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The Refraction of Light

In memory of Nenar Austin

On the day World War II ends, another war begins.  Joe Taylor, an African-American veteran decides he wants to marry Nettie French, a childhood sweetheart, and buy the house belonging to Rose Beauchamp, a white teacher who has befriended both Nettie, daughter of Rose’s deceased best friend, and Joe and encouraged their friendship and academic aspirations. Rose’s prejudice rears its head and her reluctance to sell her house to Joe sets in motion a chain of events that threatens to destroy all their futures. Harry Rosen, a Jewish immigrant from Nazi Germany, enters their lives and helps them find their way home.

Characters:

Rose Beauchamp (Bee-cham)..............sixties

Nettie French, .....................................African-American, late teens to early 20’s

Joe Taylor.............................................African-American,  late teens to early 20’s

Harry Rosen.........................................Jewish immigrant, early 20’s

ACT I Scene: Time: 1938

ACT I Scene 2: Time:  1945

ACT II: Time:  1946

The play takes place in the parlor/sitting room of a house in Berkley, Virginia, from 1938 to 1946.   The room is dominated by a stained glass window There are three exits: a door to a basement is underneath the stairs; a doorway to the kitchen, and one to the outside. A flight of stairs, topped by a landing, leads to the upstairs. 

(NOTE:  A DASH MEANS that the character’s speech is interrupted by another or that a character has a quick change in thought.  Three dots indicate a line that trails off.  Dialogue following a slash indicating what the character intended to say before being interrupted. Dialogue in brackets are words a character might have spoken but doesn’t.)

ACT I Scene 1

November 1938

The scene:  The parlor in Berkley. There is an uncluttered desk.  A radio sits on the desk. A globe sits beside the desk. 

As the house lights go down, we hear a choir singing, as if from a distance, the refrain of HIS EYE IS ON THE SPARROW

.  . . I sing because I’m happy,

I sing because I’m free,

For His eye is on the sparrow,

And I know He watches me.   

On the last line of the refrain, stage lights rise slowly and the song fades into the radio which is playing.

RADIO ANNOUNCER’s VOICE

Kristallnacht or the Night of Broken Glass, a series of coordinated attacks against Jews throughout Nazi Germany and parts of Austria, was carried out two days ago by SA storm troopers and civilians. The attacks left the streets covered with broken glass from the windows of Jewish-owned stores, buildings, and synagogues . . .

(Nettie, in her mid-teens and dressed as if she has just been to a funeral, enters from the outside carrying a wrapped package.)

. . . Now Germans and the world are waiting to see . . .

(Nettie switches off the radio and sets the package on the desk.)     

NETTIE

Miss Rose? You left the