Familiar Haunts

Where does a ghost story begin? For my new ghost story play, the answer is in familiar haunts—a coffee shop in Seattle, my bedroom in Houston, and a house with a past in New Orleans. One cloudy afternoon a couple of years ago, over coffee, artistic director Rik Deskin and I began toying with the idea of my writing a ghost story for Eclectic Theater Company. That was the beginning of The Familiar, premiering May 26, 2011, at the Odd Duck Studio in Seattle as an Equity Members Project Code presentation.

Returning to Houston, I began jotting ideas, sketching out characters and scenes, and whispering bits of dialogue to myself late at night in my bedroom—but only after I had whisked my feet off the floor and safely into bed, clear of the reach of whatever might be under the bed. So, I started the play with what scares me—the fear we all share of the unknown monster hiding under the bed or in the closet or lurking in the chambers of memory.

The Familiar grew and took on a life of its own. Yet, the final scene eluded me until a particular night in New Orleans. My friend Sarah and I were attending the Tennessee Williams Literary Festival and staying in Marigny Manor, a house built around 1845 and now operated as a B&B by our friends Gil & John. Late on the last night of our stay, it dawned on me how to end the play. In our room, I acted out my concept of the play's final ghostly scene for Sarah. Then, just as she said that’s it—that’s the ending, the lights flickered and went out all over Faubourg Marigny. What timing! Of course, as we were in New Orleans, we and the neighbors all made good use of the dark, gathering on Gil and John's verandah to visit over drinks by moonlight for an hour or so until the house lights came up again.

Equity Member Project Code Presentation
Seattle, WA

http://eclectictheatercompany.org

The Familiar by Rosemary Poole-Carter
Directed by: Rik Deskin
Opening: May 26, 2011
Closing: June 18, 2011

Two sisters haunted by the past, one man haunted by passion, in a house possessed by The Familiar . . .

There’s something unsettling under the bed. Elinor wants it out, Cissie wants it hidden, and Sean would rather concentrate on possibilities on top of the bed. As Elinor pulls old possessions and dusty objects from under the bed, these become props for improvisations among Elinor, Cissie, and Sean as the three of them maneuver around one another—provoking or tantalizing, wary of touch and entanglements—playing ever closer to what haunts them.

Lure of the Southern Gothic

As a child growing up in Texas, I devoured my grandparents’ tales of Louisiana and Mississippi along with the biscuits and grits. I also swallowed the bitter taste of family conflicts and homegrown dramatic tensions. Escaping into storytelling, like so many future writers, I dreamed of one day holding my published novels and of witnessing my plays on stage, but thought myself handicapped by not being from somewhere exciting such as New York or Paris. Still, I persevered, and some of my writing dreams have since come true—though not by my turning away from my uneasy beginnings. When I turned back, found the courage to peer into the dark corners and let myself be lured into them by the Southern Gothic, then I discovered my voice and my audience.

Gothic literature earned its name, in part, because of the settings it favors—the gothic architecture of labyrinthine castles and crumbling manor houses—enclosing worlds haunted by madness and monstrosity. How easily traditional gothic atmosphere moves, like a restless spirit over marshland, into the Southern Gothic settings of decaying plantation mansions and ravaged landscapes. The antebellum social order echoes the feudal order, and the Lost Cause becomes the protest of power thwarted. Traditional gothic characters such as the patriarchal tyrant and demonic female become the plantation master and the eccentric lady, who cover their respective cruelty and perversion with a sense of entitlement or a genteel veneer.

The sin under the surface, the subtext of evil, is an inextricable part of all gothic tales. In Victorian gothic stories, the conflict between the good and the wicked might be enacted between stock characters—heroes and villains—or dramatized with “doubles” or revealed within a single tormented soul, most famously, by Dr. Jekyll and his other self, Mr. Hyde. While some traditional gothic literature may turn to strange science or the supernatural to raise anxiety in its audience, the Southern Gothic creates a mounting sense of unease by exploring the grotesque in the natural world and exposing the horror beneath the ordinary, revealing the sin and perhaps the saving grace. In my historical novel, Women of Magdalene, the plantation mansion is transformed into the Magdalene Ladies’ Lunatic Asylum, which, as an idealist young doctor discovers, is run by a madman. In my writing, I find the monster in the closet is rascism and the monster under the bed is misogyny. Doubles, indeed, lurking in shadow and hiding behind custom. Even so, I lift my guttering candle and follow the Southern gothic down another dark corridor.