The Making of a Trilogy: An Introduction

SPECIAL SECTION MAJUNG OF A TRILOGY Three Places in Rhode Island Sakonnet Point Rumstick Road NayattSchool 80 An.Intoduction Elizabeth LeCompte SAKONNET POINT An introduction to the elements/props/iconography of the story to come: Divided into sequences: Spalding and the Boy Spalding and the Woman with the House Spalding and the Woman with the Fan Spalding and the Woman with the Blanket Spalding and the Women with the Sheets Spalding's relationship with each of these people is first presented in Sakonnet Point. The Woman with the House is explored again in Runstick Road. The Woman with the Fan becomes the Woman who plays Celia Coplestone in Nayatt School. The Woman with the Blanket becomes the Woman in the Red Tent in Rurnstick Road. The Women with the Sheets become the Women with the Record Players in Nayatt School. The props that are identified with each of these people are used and re-used in different configurations and contexts throughout all three pieces. The essential props are: THE RED TENT: In Sakonnet, it is high up on a platform above the playing space. People come and go from it, and the voices of women talking are heard from inside it. Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto is playing on a record player inside it. The Woman with the Blanket emerges from it and sings a song. THE HOUSE: A small wooden doll house with a picture window. In Sakonnet, it is on the playing floor. The Woman with the House runs around it, sits against it, and carries it away. THE RECORD PLAYER: A heavy duty mono record player used in schools. In Sakonnet, it is on the playing 81 THE FANOLA: THE SHEETS: floor. The Woman with the House plays sounds of the American Southwest. The Woman with the Fan plays a children's record on it. A small child's plastic record player. In Sakonnet , it is in the tent. The Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto is played on it continuously throughout the piece. In Sakonnet, they are hung on long clotheslines which traverse the space. This is the conclusion of the piece. RUMSTICK ROAD Spalding interviews his father, his father's mother, his mother's mother, and his mother's psychiatrist. He asks questions about his childhood, about his pet dogs, about his mother, her suicide, and what she was like. He remembers events in his life and compares these memories with the memories of his family. He presses his father to tell him about the night his mother committed suicide. 82 The romantic, mystical, religious aspects of his mother's personality as remembered by the family are revealed against the rational, pragmatic materialism of his father. These aspects are wedded in the piece itself, which is part dream, part non-literal imagery, and part factual documentary. They run parallel to each other, fusing at different points in the piece so that at these points the literal is indistinguishable from the figurative, the factual from the fictive. Rumstick Road takes place in the House. The House is divided into two rooms on either side of a platform from which an operator runs the lights, the tape recordings, the records, and the slides. Behind this platform is a third room which can only be seen via mirrors on the insides of the doors which open into the rooms on either side. Scenes are played in all three of these rooms, on an examination table in the center in front of the operator's panel, and in a long tunnel which stretches behind the picture window in the back wall of one of the rooms. THE RED TENT: THE HOUSE: THE RECORD PLAYER: THE SHEETS: THE TELEPHONE: In Rumstick, it is sitting in the room with the picture window. The Man and Spud lift it and "fly" it through the window. The Woman makes a bed in it and lies down. It is now full size. Rumstick Road takes place in it. The miniature house is seen at the end of the tunnel as you look out the window. It is lit from within, as is the red tent. It is now on the floor of the room. The Woman places a...