Folly Beach - Dorothea Benton Frank [0]
Dorothea Benton Frank
Dedication
In memory of Dorothy Kuhns Heyward
Epigraph
DUSK
From Carolina Chansons
They tell me she is beautiful, my City,
That she is colorful and quaint, alone
Among the cities. But I, I who have known
Her tenderness, her courage, and her pity,
Have felt her forces mould me, mind and bone,
Life after life, up from her first beginning.
How can I think of her in wood and stone!
To others she has given of her beauty,
Her gardens, and her dim, old, faded ways,
Her laughter, and her happy, drifting hours,
Glad, spendthrift April, squandering her flowers,
The sharp, still wonder of her Autumn days;
Her chimes that shimmer from St. Michael’s steeple
Across the deep maturity of June,
Like sunlight slanting over open water
Under a high, blue, listless afternoon.
But when the dusk is deep upon the harbor,
She finds me where her rivers meet and speak,
And while the constellations ride the silence
High overhead, her cheek is on my cheek.
I know her in the thrill behind the dark
When sleep brims all her silent thoroughfares.
She is the glamor in the quiet park
That kindles simple things like grass and trees.
Wistful and wanton as her sea-born airs,
Bringer of dim, rich, age-old memories.
Out on the gloom-deep water, when the nights
Are choked with fog, and perilous, and blind,
She is the faith that tends the calling lights.
Hers is the stifled voice of harbor bells
Muffled and broken by the mist and wind.
Hers are the eyes through which I look on life
And find it brave and splendid. And the stir
Of hidden music shaping all my songs,
And these my songs, my all, belong to her.
DUBOSE HEYWARD
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Epigraph
One • Act I / Scene 1
Two • Cate / At the Cemetery
Three • Act I / Scene 2
Four • Cate / Needs a Plan
Five • Act I / Scene 3
Six • Cate / Packing
Seven • Act I / Scene 4
Eight • Cate / Road Trip
Nine • Act I / Scene 5
Ten • Cate / The Porgy House
Eleven • Act II / Scene 1
Twelve • Cate / The Piano
Thirteen • Act II / Scene 2
Fourteen • Cate / About Dorothy
Fifteen • Act II / Scene 3
Sixteen • Cate / Grandma
Seventeen • Act II / Scene 4
Eighteen • Cate / The Moon
Nineteen • Act II / Scene 5
Twenty • Cate / The Piano
Twenty-one • Act III / Scene 1
Twenty-two • Cate / The Hospital
Twenty-three • Act III / Scene 2
Twenty-four • Cate / The Sisters
Twenty-five • Act III / Scene 3
Twenty-six • Cate / Aunt Daisy
Twenty-seven • Act III / Scene 4
Twenty-eight • Cate / In Control
Twenty-nine • Act III / Scene 5
Thirty • Cate / The Playwright
Epilogue • September 2010
Author's Note
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Also by Dorothea Benton Frank
Credits
Copyright
About the Publisher
Chapter One
Folly Beach
A One-Woman Show with Images
By Cathryn Mahon Cooper
Setting: St. Philip’s Cemetery in Charleston, South Carolina. Dorothy Kuhns Heyward rises from her grave and dusts herself off. She kisses her fingertips and touches the tombstone of DuBose Heyward, which is next to hers. She walks to center stage near the footlights and speaks.
Director’s Note: Images to run on back wall scrim: photo of Folly Beach, the beach itself including the Morris Island Lighthouse, photo of Murray Boulevard with an enormous full moon, map of Ohio and Dorothy in evening dress, and DuBose in smoking jacket. Dorothy has a serious side but she’s also very funny.
Act I
Scene 1
Dorothy: I married an actual renaissance man. Yes, I really did! The story I have to tell you is about the deep and abiding love we shared. Not the carnal details, please, but some of its other aspects such as the sacrifices we were willing to make and the lengths to which we would go for each other. DuBose Heyward was the real and only true love of my life.
It was the summer of 1921 and when we met for the first time, we were both guests at the MacDowell Colony in New Hampshire. Mrs. MacDowell was a wonderful woman who had a very large estate but a very small family. But she loved the arts! So every summer she invited