The Darker Face of the Earth

By Rita Dove

The Darker Face of the Earth, a play by the poet laureate of the United States, creates a human drama of classical proportions. Behind the facade of antebellum Southern plantation life unfolds a mysterious tale of interracial love and strife, guilt and suffering, as both slave and master struggle against a fate that threatens to eclipse them altogether.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Story Line Press
• Release date: Sep 20, 2022
• ISBN: 9781586541309

Rita Dove

Rita Dove received the Pulitzer Prize for her third collection of poetry, Thomas and Beulah, in 1987, and she served as US Poet Laureate from 1993¬ to 1995. Her drama, The Darker Face of the Earth, opened at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in 1996 and the Kennedy Center in Washington in 1997, followed by its European premiere at the Royal National Theatre in London in 1999. Her song cycle, Seven for Luck, with music by John Williams, premiered in 1998, and her 2020 song cycle, A Standing Witness, fourteen poems with music by Richard Danielpour, was sung by Susan Graham at the Kennedy Center in 2021. W. W. Norton published Dove’s latest volume of poems, Playlist for the Apocalypse, in 2021. Rita Dove’s numerous honors include the 2019 Wallace Stevens Award from the Academy of American Poets and the 2021 Gold Medal for Poetry from the American Academy of Arts and Letters as the sixteenth—and third female and first African American—poet in the Medal’s 110-year history. She is the recipient of both the National Humanities Medal and the National Medal of Arts, making her the only poet ever to receive both. To date, she has received twenty-nine honorary doctorates. She teaches at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, where she is the Henry Hoyns Professor of Creative Writing.

Book preview

MORE PRAISE FOR THE DARKER FACE OF THE EARTH

A major American play . . . With skill that approaches a celestial gift, Dove blends form, subject and content.

—The Mail Tribune

[Dove’s] first venture into playwriting has produced an enormously powerful and beautiful work. The themes are intricate, the main characters full-bodied and the language—oh, the language—nothing short of stunning.

—CurtainUp

Playwright Dove merges folklore, voodoo ritual and biblical analogy with biting social commentary. The action is suspenseful, the dialogue picturesque.

—Variety

The Darker Face of the Earth marks a considerable achievement . . . This powerful exploration of sexual and racial tensions is assembled in an imaginative realm, with few technical requirements.

—Harvard Review

Lushly written, ingeniously plotted, drenched in antebellum atmosphere, The Darker Face of the Earth has lots of soul.

—The Guardian (England)

Sophocles and slavery come together with bitter poignancy . . . By connecting the issue of slavery to one of the most fundamental Greek tragedies, The Darker Face of the Earth draws its own inescapable conclusion about the impact of an immoral institution.

—The Baltimore Sun

Black theatre takes a big step forward.

—The Stage

A strong and ambitious piece of work . . . [Dove] does one of the hardest things to do onstage, something maybe only a poet could—she creates in Augustus a living metaphor . . . [He] is not only Oedipus here, but Hamlet and Moses, and all the Greek heroes unlucky enough to be half-mortal and half-God . . . Throughout the play, the transference of the legend from ancient Greece to the antebellum South works surprisingly well . . . [Dove’s] scenes are shaped with ease and grace; her dialogue, even when poetic, is expressive; and she has a vivid sense of character.

—The Washington Post

. . . the play’s selectivity of incident, judicious sparseness, clean lines, even dignified tone and simple staging keep it operating successfully as a modernization of the classic Greek tragic mode.

—The Women’s Review of Books

. . . [this] play begs to be staged. One can dream a little and wish that it could be produced in every city, every school in the country.

—The Times (Trenton, NJ)

[Rita Dove’s] riveting and accomplished play . . . should have a permanent place in the repertoire of the American theater.

—The Star-Ledger

The Darker Face of the Earth

Copyright © 1994, 1996, 2000, 2022 by Rita Dove

All Rights Reserved

Fourth Edition layout by Daniela Connor

No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without the prior written permission of both the publisher and the copyright owner.

e-ISBN 978-1-58654-051-7

ISBN 978-1-58654-119-4 (tradepaper)

978-1-58654-120-0 (casebound)

The National Endowment for the Arts, the Los Angeles County Arts Commission, the Ahmanson Foundation, the Dwight Stuart Youth Fund, the Max Factor Family Foundation, the Pasadena Tournament of Roses Foundation, the Pasadena Arts & Culture Commission and the City of Pasadena Cultural Affairs Division, the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs, the Audrey & Sydney Irmas Charitable Foundation, the Kinder Morgan Foundation, the Meta & George Rosenberg Foundation, the Allergan Foundation, the Riordan Foundation, Amazon Literary Partnership, and the Mara W. Breech Foundation partially support Red Hen Press.

Fourth Edition

Published by Story Line Press

an imprint of Red Hen Press

www.redhen.org

Acknowledgments

First and foremost I would like to thank my husband, Fred Viebahn, for his encouragement and help during all the stages of my work on this play—from the moment decades ago in our sun-drenched apartment at Mishkenot Sha’ananim, Jerusalem, when I first told him my idea, through the years the first draft spent relegated to the bottom of a drawer, to the day Story Line Press offered to publish the manuscript, and finally to the play’s realization on stage. I am indebted to my daughter, Aviva, who—in the clear wisdom of youth—never let her love for the play blind her to the wobbles and bloopers so unerringly detected by her laser eye.

I am also grateful to Robert McDowell of Story Line Press for his vision and enthusiasm and to Cynthia White, former director of play development at Oregon Shakespeare Festival, for her unflagging support, which led directly to the first full stage production in 1996. Of the many people who were involved in earlier renderings I can mention only the principal players: Jennifer Nelson not only brought her inspired direction to a three-week workshop at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in 1994 (my first behind-the-stage theatre experience), but directed staged readings at the Round House in Silver Spring, Maryland, and at the Roundabout Theatre on Broadway (with Edgar Lansbury as producer); director Ricardo Khan’s and dramaturg Sydné Mahone’s passionate insights propelled a staged reading at Crossroads Theatre in New Brunswick, New Jersey; and Derek Walcott directed a superb cast by lending his genius to a very poetic and dramatic reading at the 92nd Street Y in New York City in 1995.

This play is for my daughter

Aviva Chantal Tamu Dove-Viebahn.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Cast

Prologue

Act One

Scene 1

Scene 2

Scene 3

Scene 4

Scene 5

Scene 6

Scene 7

Scene 8

Act Two

Scene 1

Scene 2

Scene 3

Scene 4

Scene 5

Scene 6

Scene 7

Scene 8

An Interview with Rita Dove

Biographical Note

CAST

Female slaves:

PHEBE

PSYCHE, in her mid-teens

SCYLLA, pronounced Skilla

TICEY, a house slave

DIANA, a young girl about 12 years old

SLAVE WOMAN/NARRATOR

Male slaves:

HECTOR, an African

ALEXANDER

SCIPIO, pronounced Sippio

AUGUSTUS NEWCASTLE, a mulatto

The whites:

AMALIA JENNINGS LAFARGE

LOUIS LAFARGE, Amalia’s husband

DOCTOR, in his fifties

JONES, the overseer, in his thirties

The black conspirators:

LEADER

BENJAMIN SKEENE

HENRY BLAKE

Other slaves and conspirators

The Darker Face of the Earth was first performed at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland, Oregon, USA, on 27 July 1996, under the direction of Ricardo Khan and with the following cast:

Time

Prologue: about 1820.

Acts I and II: twenty years later.

Place

The action takes place in antebellum South Carolina, on the Jennings Plantation and in its environs.

The characters of PSYCHE and DIANA, as well as the DOCTOR and JONES, can be played by the same actors, as long as it is made clear to the audience that they are different people.

On occasion, the slaves comment upon the play somewhat in the manner of a Greek chorus. Individual characters are bound by time and circumstance; the chorus of slaves is more detached and omnipresent. By moving and speaking in a ritualized manner, they provide vocal and percussive counterpoint to the action. The slave woman, who occasionally steps forward as the narrator, is quietly present in all slave scenes.

PROLOGUE

Lights rise on the big house, revealing the porch, AMALIA’s bedroom, LOUIS’s study and the hallway.

HECTOR, a slave in his early twenties, is standing on the porch, looking up at a second-story window. PHEBE,