Snowed: A One Act Play

By David King

Lurking in the background is the greater instance of the 1967 CHICAGO Snow Storm, that incorporates the lesser story of one man, Lawrence Godfrey, and the acquired baggage that has created barriers based on circumstances that have alienated him from his family. Mainly, between him and his son, Francis, who resists his father's attempts to get him to commit to accepting his place as the actively on-the-job working heir to the family business.

Another of the stories within the story is of the loss of sexual intimacy between Lawrence and his wife, Esther. And, of the tensions resulting in his sister, Tiara, and her African born husband, Dewitt, being separated based on the prejudicial notions influenced on Tiara by her snobbish former boy friend who is now her on the job boss.

Nevertheless, since Lawrence has learned he is the target for assassination, it is Dewitt, to whom Lawrence entrusts as next, after himself, to run the family businesses and protect the family.

Events occurring from 1961 - 1967, include a time when Martin Luther King Jr's non-violent civil rights movement was waning, of the emergence of Jesse Jackson Sr. whom the media erroneously labeled as a closet "Black Militant" type, but who was in fact a believer in the capitalistic system, and it is at the time of the rise of the feminist, and Gay movements.

The play points out that the imperfect man-made-up positives, and negatives involving our meager importance as we continue even today to waste our time for evolving, living separated by social fences obsessed ultimately with actions and acts like "pigs" and so we have no regard for self-analysis and self-control, we scramble and trample and "kill" each other to be first to "feed" at the "trough", the issues we treat as crucial, but, to the world as a whole are considered as insignificant when compared to (?) ... nature, and the continuation of the universe.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jul 19, 2011
• ISBN: 9781462887835

David King

Sir David King is the UK Government's Chief Science Adviser.  In this position, he has instigated the Energy Research Partnership, run the Government Foresight program on Flood and Coastal Defenses, and set up the Climate Change Conference at Exeter in 2005, as well as lectured on climate change to numerous parliaments and governments. 

Book preview

Copyright © 2011 by David King.

Library of Congress Control Number:   2011909699

ISBN: Hardcover    978-1-4628-8781-1

ISBN: Softcover      978-1-4628-8782-8

ISBN: Ebook             978-1-4628-8783-5

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

This book was printed in the United States of America.

To order additional copies of this book, contact:

Xlibris Corporation

1-888-795-4274

www.Xlibris.com

[e-mail]

100876

CONTENTS

Characters In Order of Appearance

SNOWED

SCENE 1

Scene Two

Scene Three

Scene 4

CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT

Characters In Order of Appearance

ESTHER GODFREY: Regal bearing, arrestingly attractive, long-suffering

LAWRENCE GODFREY JR.: Rich, sometimes bombastic, crude in speech

LAWRENCE FRANCIS GODFREY: Affects what he thinks is the manners of genteel people

TIARA (Tee) DOMINIQUE GODFREY-LUSALA: Sibling rival, a successful doctor in the county hospital

KIRK LENDER: Opponent of integration and favors covenant restrictions in housing

EDWARD STACEY: Blue-blood socialite who befriends and initially arranges the deal that assisted Lawrence to buy his house for one dollar

MOVING MEN

SUZETTE LUSALA: Only daughter of Tiara and, her husband, Dewitt

ANGELINE GODFREY: Only daughter of Lawrence. and, Esther

VICTORIA GODFREY: An honest and humble woman unaware of her striking beauty and prefers simple attire to gaudy accessories of any kind

DEWITT LUSALA: Husband to Tiara

PEPE WILLS: Conman and killer, who Lawrence testified against that helped send Wills to prison

HENCHMAN#1

HENCHMAN#2

PATRICIA: Francis’s fiance

The actions in the play take place first in three of four scene settings, in ACT I:

Scene 1 is of a dilapidated looking living room on moving day; Scene 2, is the new living room in the exclusive Market Place a sub-district in Kenwood, on January 24, 1967; Scene 3 is at Jack Straw’s Liquors and Department store; the final scene is at the family Burial Vault

SNOWED

ACT I

SCENE 1

At Rise. Lights come on:

TIME: our story begins, in Chicago, it is 1961, late afternoon, in the hot summer time. and in the Godfrey family’s tattered, rat and roach infested Southside Ghetto apartment. The living room is in disarray and cluttered with moving boxes that are scattered and stacked about. It is near noon, and all of the Godfrey family look on at Victoria’s son, Lawrence Godfrey jr., who’s occupation is that of a doorman by inheritance at a famous Loop Hotel that his father had worked at previously. He is wearing his now disheveled hotel uniform’s doorman’s cap, and overcoat; beside him stands his mother Victoria, dressed in a plain old fashioned cloth overcoat, flower printed ankle-high dress, flat black shoes and she holds a big black bag; in front of her stands Lawrence Frances Godfrey, her son’s son, he is dressed in a cap, jacket, shirt, and pants with suspenders, gym shoes: Esther, Lawrence’s wife has her patched overcoat on over a calf high print dress, low-heeled shoes, and wears a scarf; big afro-haired Tiara Dominique (Tee) always waits until the last moment to dress is still in her colorful African designed housecoat, gold gown, and white slippers.

Lawrence is about to close his deal with smug-faced Kurt Lender, holding a kerchief to his nose is an wealthy white-man of the upper class Market Place residential district, who’s gaze contemptuously about the room and at the Godfrey’s. With him is two men, the silent bigger one is a scarred face thug who wears a bandana and dresses in a leather jacket, jeans and boots, the other smaller man wears mechanics overalls over a white t-shirt, a rebel cap and a black eye-patch and constantly smirks at Tiara Dominique as