Ghosts of Writings Past

Last night I was looking through my the files on my computer, and I came across a folder named "Plays." This immediately brought back memories of plays I used to write and perform with the aid of my siblings and numerous cousins. I would always write the plays, taking into account every one of my cousins' strengths and weaknesses, and creating parts that could easily be played by various members of the Ellis family. I always played the lead, because I felt I could never count on anyone else to learn all the lines required to be the lead. I even formed a theater company: the Ellis Family Theater Company, or the E.F.T.C.

A facsimile of the original program

We would practice these plays for months, and then at a convenient family gathering we would put them on for the parents and youngest children who weren't yet old enough to play parts. I would come up with the costumes, the music, and the programs, occasionally delegating tasks to the two cousins my age.

The first of these plays was The Story of a Princess and the Tale of a Dragon, a short drama about a princess who is captured by  dragon and an evil witch who are in cahoots, and is freed by a brave knight. The most memorable scene from that play was the one where the dragon failed to come out of the coffee table cave when she was supposed to. It was the first play I had ever written, and I was very proud of it, despite the errors of my actors. I thought I had lost the manuscript for this play, but I found a copy of it in the scrapbook I made of all the E.F.T.C. plays. It's absolutely wonderful.

Gismund and Chrysophylax plot their devious plots

The dragon and the knight battle

The princess thanks the knight for rescuing her

The next play we performed was a very short skit for the annual Thanksgiving talent show we held for our grandparents. This was The Daughters of Liberty. At a tea party five young women talk about the work they are doing for the revolutionary soldiers, and denounce King George. There wasn't much of a plot, but it was fun to jump out of my chair and cry, "Liberty forever and down with all tyrants!" And it's always fun to dress up in period costumes.

Discussing the upcoming highland dancing contest

Our piéce de résistance was a play set in the Scottish Highlands, We'll Come as the Winds Come. The play centered around a group of children who formed a clan called the Rob Roy Clan. They terrorize the game warden,Will MacNeil, who is always trying to catch people for poaching, but is secretly poaching himself. In one scene they write R.R.C. on various rocks to frighten Will. (This came from a club me and my siblings had once where we would go around the property and scrawl those initials on all of the cement surfaces and even trees. There are still evidences of the club today.) There was even a Scottish dancing competition, complete with swords, to showcase our dancing skills. (I choreographed the dance moves.)

Highland dancing

The boys try their feet at dancing, with disastrous consequences

An example of the choreography of the highland dance

When we put on our plays, they were far from perfect, and I would often get frustrated with the lack of appreciation of art. I still marvel that we were able to sort of pull off We'll Come as the Winds Come, the longest play we had ever performed. They were amusing at best. When we performed, the grownups were always very aggravating, always telling us to speak loud, and sometimes even laughing when they weren't supposed to. I think they enjoyed them, though, despite their annoying tendencies.

Those were not the only plays I ever wrote, though the others were never performed. There was the infamous Joan of Arc. Joan of Arc has always been one of my favorite saints, and after I read Mark Twain's Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc, I had to write a play about her. The play was extremely long. Unfortunately the manuscript has been lost, so I don't remember exactly how long it was, but it was long. It has become a family joke: Joan of Arch in ninety acts. The number grows every year. We started to practice the play after I wrote it, but I soon gave it up, as I realized it would never come off.

Last night as I was looking through the folder named "Plays" I found two other plays I had written years ago. The best one is One Wore Blue, One Wore Gray. This play, as the title suggests, is set in Civil War Virginia. The main character is Meriel Lee, niece of Robert E. Lee, to be played, of course, by me. (Each character in my plays was designed to fit each member of the family.) She and her male cousins (played by my brothers) met two Yankee girls and a Yankee boy (played by my Yankee cousins). They start off as friends, then find out that they are on different sides, and promptly hate each other. I'm still not sure what Yankees were doing in Virginia in war time. Meriel's cousins go off to fight, one gets killed, and the other is captured. When the Yankee girls find out, one of them (conveniently the niece of Lincoln), writes to her uncle and asks that he be released. The girls become friends again, and all is happy and well. I began to read this play out loud to my sisters. I did not get very far since I was laughing too hard. My dad came in, and read it out loud to us, using different voices for each character. I've never laughed so hard in my life.
When I wrote the play, I was probably around fourteen or fifteen, and I was into melodrama. The play is very melodramatic. The characters are always talking through their teeth, talking in stricken voices, or looking stricken, or some variation on being stricken, and Meriel twice breaks out into verse. It was extremely amusing, if not slightly embarrassing. Here is one priceless scene:



Meriel: (Between clenched teeth.) So. You are a Yankee.

Emily: What’s wrong? Aren’t you one too?

Meriel: (nearly shouting) No!

(Emily jumps up and faces Meriel)

Emily: Oh, so you are a rebel. I might have known.

Meriel: Yes, and I am proud of it. My uncle is Robert E. Lee.

Emily: So what? My uncle is the president of the United States.

I have no idea what I was thinking.

Back when I wrote those plays, I took them very seriously. Now, years later, I can look back at my writing and laugh. I have fond memories of those days. I'm toying with the idea of publishing my first mystery story, Ocean Mistory. I can guarantee you'll laugh. I know my family did when I discovered the notebook I had written it in and read it aloud to them. But that, as a certain professor of mine is fond of saying, is a story for another day.