Grace at the Claremont
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In August 1888, Sue Gilbert Dickinson traveled with her two adult children from Amherst, Massachusetts, to a small fishing village on Mount Desert Island, Maine. Their plan is to stay for a month at the recently-built Claremont House in Southwest Harbor. The Claremont is co-owned and managed by a ship captain’s wife, Grace Pease. Grace has spent years at sea with her husband.
Sue is married to the Austin, the brother of the poet Emily Dickinson, who has just died two years earlier. Sue and Emily had been lovers in their twenties, and then, after the marriage, they were sisters-in-law and next-door neighbors. Sue has brought a collection of Emily’s poems and letters with her to Maine, intending to prepare them for publication.
For five years, the Dickinson family has been wracked by Austin’s very public affair with a faculty member’s wife at Amherst College. Sue has been marinating in rage and resentment, and her son Ned is deeply enmeshed in the drama, attempting to protect his mother. Daughter Mattie, on break from Smith College, is exhausted by the ongoing drama in the family, and she has made plans to spend the month socializing with schoolmates in Bar Harbor, on the far side of the island.
The Dickinson histrionics come to a head against a backdrop of down-to-earth islanders who work at the Claremont. In a showdown with Grace, Mattie is forced to confront her own part in the family dramas, and she learns a painful lesson about the difference between freedom and running away.
Two males, four females
Single set
40 minutes
Sue is married to the Austin, the brother of the poet Emily Dickinson, who has just died two years earlier. Sue and Emily had been lovers in their twenties, and then, after the marriage, they were sisters-in-law and next-door neighbors. Sue has brought a collection of Emily’s poems and letters with her to Maine, intending to prepare them for publication.
For five years, the Dickinson family has been wracked by Austin’s very public affair with a faculty member’s wife at Amherst College. Sue has been marinating in rage and resentment, and her son Ned is deeply enmeshed in the drama, attempting to protect his mother. Daughter Mattie, on break from Smith College, is exhausted by the ongoing drama in the family, and she has made plans to spend the month socializing with schoolmates in Bar Harbor, on the far side of the island.
The Dickinson histrionics come to a head against a backdrop of down-to-earth islanders who work at the Claremont. In a showdown with Grace, Mattie is forced to confront her own part in the family dramas, and she learns a painful lesson about the difference between freedom and running away.
Two males, four females
Single set
40 minutes
