This play was written both quoting from and inspired by Denman Thompson's The Old Homestead along with the lovely song "Hard Times Come Again No More" which I first fell in love with when hearing the James Taylor/Yoyo Ma collaboration of the song. But the has been recorded by so many artists before and since.
This was a commission for the first presentation of America-in-Play when it was in residence at the Tribeca Performing Arts Center. It was written up in the New York Times which was sooooo exciting. My first write up in the Times as a playwright, sort of. :)
It had an amazing musical arrangement by Adam Gwon which unfortunately wasn't realized because the cast were not singers, and really couldn't read music, but it is more proof (if you need more) that Adam Gwon can do anything. He is also a great friend.
This play is pretty specific. It tracks my love of farm and open range stories from the American start to the American finish (until we decide to start eating fresh and local again in greater numbers).
Growing up in the Imperial Valley and the Coachella Valley in California meant my schools and homes were surrounded by agricultural fields and the growing seasons were a part of my life. A fascination with the life of the people who make our food possible - from the early American settlers to the Dust Bowl to the enormous cooperate entities that own most farms now and the impoverished workers who pick that food - has always been a part of my life and I would argue it's a part of yours. It is our collective history, and our everyday - and hopefully some of that is in this little musical play.
Farmer’s Quartette
By Erin Browne
Farmers:
Jonathan
Jo
Joshua
Josephina
Setting:
Field – New York, Oklahoma, Iowa, California
Time:
1892, 1934, 1980, 2005
Songs: Old Oaken Bucket, Hard Times Come Again No More
Underlined words function in that during the Jo scene, Jonathan and Jo speak them together. In the Joshua scene, Jonathan, Jo, and Joshua say them together. In Josephina all farmers should speak together. This should act as a slow build to represent the building history of generation after generation.
Words in italics drawn from The Old Homestead by Denman Thompson
FARMER’S QUARTETTE
The Farmer’s Quartette singing Hard Times Come Again No More
FQ sings
Let us pause in life’s pleasures and count its many tears
Let us all sup the sorrow with the poor
There’s a song that will linger forever in our ears:
Hard times, come again no more.
It’s the song, the sigh of the weary,
Hard times, hard times, come again no more.
Many days you have lingered around my cabin door.
O, Hard times come again no more.
O, Hard times, come again no more.
Jonathan takes a dipper of water out of the bucket from the well.
JOSEPHINA
New York, 1892
JONATHAN
That tastes good. I tell you, boys, there’s nothing like water out of the bucket in a tin dipper, beats all your tomfool drinks in it’s as good as the song – as the old bucket itself.
Jonathan sings a few lines from the Old Oaken Bucket a cappella and passes the dipper on.
Na boys, farming is hard work. Some winters we darn near freeze, you remember that third winter we never thought we’d make it through. Glad we didn’t give up then boys, glad we stayed our ground. Our ground, our land. Then there’s a day like this so hot it’d melt your crops right there in the field. We have to scratch around like a hen up here with forty chickens to pay taxes and keep out of the poorhouse. But boy, you have some cool country water like that and it makes a soul remember why he came out here to settle in the first place. Makes you wonder how folks can live in a city, livin in a box, workin in a box, and drinkin dirty water. Those city folks don’t know what we’ve got here, our sunrises and water, they’d be out here in a minute. Yes sir. Well, the yield ain’t quite so good as they used to be, and it’s ben a leetle worse these year than ever. Then we hev had a good deal to contend with – the season’s been dry and we’ve had two circuses and a balloon ascension, and a wrestling match, and one thing and another; and old Abe Hill always contended such things hurt crops worse than grasshoppers. But boys, all my horses are healthy and there’s nothin I’m wantin for. Sept maybe my son Rueben back home ta help.
JOSHUA
Hear Ruenben’s been in the big city himself.
JONATHAN
Trying to make his fortune. You know how the young folks get a notion in their head. Off to New York to strike it rich and make his old pa proud.
JO
New York must be a pretty smart sort of village.
JONATHAN
I’ve never been myself. Spose I should go one of these days. But not today boys, the horses’d fall down dead from sweat and exhaustion.
JOSHUA
Been pretty warm to-day, ain’t it?
JONATHAN
Warm? Should think it was! Hotter than mustard. Oh, it got so hot to-day over to the store that the mercury jumped right up and knocked the top right off the thermometer!
JO
Oh I guess not!
JONATHAN
Well, that’s what I was told; but folks lie so nowadays you can’t believe more’n half of what you hear.
JOSHUA
I should think so.
They pass the dipper back to Jonathan. He takes another long drink.
JOSEPHINA
Dinner’s on boys.
JONATHAN
Thank’ee, thank’ee. Now come on in and have some supper. I think I smell some pie bakin if my old nose knows a thing or two.
As the farmers head inside they take up Hard Times again. Jo emerges as the leader.
FQ sings
As we seek mirth, and beauty, and music light and gay
There are frail forms fainting at the door.
Though their voices are silent, their pleading looks will say:
Hard times, come again no more.
It’s the song, the sigh of the weary.
Hard times, hard times, come again no more.
Many days you have lingered around my cabin door.
O, Hard times, comes again no more.
Jo and FQ pat their lips and brows with handkerchiefs.
JOSEPHINA
Oklahoma, 1934
JO
I sure could use a nice tall glass a water from a tap. Couldn’t you boys? Tha tap don’t give water anymore. Don know what happened to it. Was just three years ago these fields were all green n damp with dew. These fields, not fields so much now as sand. Always wanted to go to the beach my pa’d say, he left me this land. Now after he’s gone, tha beach’s come to his grave. Sand, not even sand, dry dirt like dust, like ashes. Like nothing I’ve ever seen before. I went to the beach once n this is not sand like that. Sure could use just one sweet cold drink of water.
Sings a few lines from Old Oaken Bucket acappella to himself.
JO
My pa used ta sing that. His pa used ta sing it to him. Sand at the beach, well, it crunches. This here dust why it just slips through your fingers n the cracks in your house, n your nose n your mouth so it settles on your teeth n the back of your throat like a lump at a funeral. Dries up your eyes so you can’t even cry about it, it’s in every bite a food ya eat when there’s food to eat, which ain’t very often. My cows all dead, is your’s boys?
Nods of agreement.
JOSEPHINA
Last one died last night. Starved I think.
JO
Like my littlest child. I think she died a hunger, she was thin as a rail, n being hot n no doctor, n my wife gone right after her.
JOSEPHINA
Won’t help you talking your troubles Jo.
JO
Why it’s so that I don’t have nothing else to talk anymore.
JOSHUA
My eldest died in our barn fire while back, least your eldest Rueben got outta town to greener pastures.
JO
Only smart one in the family. Only one willing to leave this plot a dirt. But we’re leavin now boys. I’ve decided. Me and mine that’s left, we’re following Rueben n movin west towards the ocean, towards the real crunching sand. This land is a prison boys. My family’s been here, three generations, long as anybody, but I need to save mine. Nothing will come of this land but death. I’m sick of that round sun staring me in the face, and I’m sick a being thirsty. I’m sick a working for nothing but pain. See you boys at the ocean when you come to your senses, we’ll be followin my boy Rueben to the promised land.
Jo begins to sing alone but the others join in after the first line.
FQ sings
It’s a song that the wind blows across the troubled wave.
It’s a cry that is heard along the shore.
It’s the words that are whispered beside the lowly grave
When hard times will come again no more.
It’s the song, the sigh of the weary.
Hard time, hard times, come again no more.
Many days you have lingered around my cabin door.
Hard times, come again no more.
Joshua hands out coffee mugs full of water, probably from Denny’s or a mid-western chain restaurant like Bob’s Big Boy. He takes a long swig and surveys his land.
JOSEPHINA
Iowa, 1980
JOSHUA
Evening gentlemen. God it’s beautiful, isn’t it? This land, this sunset.
JONATHAN
Sure is.
JOSHUA
It gets so there’s days that I don’t even see my land. Hmmm. It’s getting harder and harder to be a country boy in a country that’s run by the city. It’s like all those city people forget who puts the food on their plates.
Takes a swig of water and starts to hum Old Oaken Bucket. Interrupts himself.
JOSHUA
Where do you think that bread comes from, those potatoes, that milk, this meat? It’s American farmers like me.
JONATHAN
Not if the government has anything to say about it. It’ll soon be all outa Mex-i-co and the like.
JOSHUA
It’s like you think because you’re at your office in your cubicle and pulling that twenty outa your wallet that you made that food you buy?
JO
Preaching to the choir Joshua. Preaching to the choir.
JOSHUA
If it wasn’t for people like me, people like us, there wouldn’t be those things at the supermarket for you to buy. You’d go to your grocery store one day and it would be empty and closed with a sign that says, American farmers give up because you make it too damn difficult. And now I have to be a businessman, too.
JOSEPHINA
Heard your oldest boy Rueben is getting a business degree in the city.
JOSHUA
Sure is. Hopin he’ll come back and help me run the place so I can get back to my land. He can apply for all the tax breaks and grants and I can drive my tracker around like I used to. Actually touch the soil. I hardly get to see my crops anymore. I try to make sure I get out about an hour a day. To supervise mostly. An hour to run my hand in the soil and make sure it won’t go skunk next year or the year after. An hour to smell the rain and talk to the folks who actually get to work the land while I’m too busy being a businessman.
JONATHAN
I haven’t seen my land in two days. Haven’t seen the sun either. Too much paperwork.
JOSHUA
I think I may have to buy my neighbors farm. He’s givin up the acres his family has had for four generations. I don’t know if buying it will help me keep up or sink me deeper. Cheaper product coming in over the borders and the seas, means more paperwork, more land, less farming. My grandfather never had to apply for government aid or attend advertising meetings for the board. We never used to have to advertise, people just bought good food. He used to hold me on the seat on his tractor and drive me through the fields he was so proud of. I swear I could smell the sunset coming. Can’t even remember the last time I saw a sunset. Usually on the phone or typing in my calculator. Sometimes I think Rueben should stay away, get some apartment by the sea, and work in an office. Not think about where his food is coming from like all those other folks. Then I think, this farm is my family, this farm is my history, and I won’t let it go yet. I miss it even though I’m here. I hope Rueben misses it too and he comes back to help out his old man.
Joshua pauses to drink.
JOSHUA
And I’ll drive my grandchildren around with me, on our tractors.
FQ sings
There’s a pale drooping maiden who foils her life away
With a worn out heart, whose better days are o’er.
Though her voice it would be merry, tis’ sighing all the day,
Oh hard times, come again no more.
It’s the song, the sigh of the weary.
O, Hard times, hard times, come again no more.
Many days you have lingered around my cabin door.
O, Hard times come again no more.
Farmer’s quartette produces bandanas from their pockets and ties them around their necks, heads, over their faces, wiping their brow. Josephina takes a swig from a beat up sandy plastic water bottle.
JONATHAN
California, 2004
JOSEPHINA
I was a teacher in Mexico. I taught first grade, I taught them science and poetry. Before I moved here my hands had never touched the dirt. The land here is the same as where I’m from. All up and down the Mojave band the soil is gritty and full of tiny pink jagged rocks that were once once mountains and will be sand. You have to lay topsoil over it to grow anything, even the least needy of edible plants. My husband couldn’t find a job in our city and we had to move, to America he said, he said it would be better here. Maybe we shouldn’t have but we had to do something. A baby on the way and we wanted Rueben to have the best, wanted something better than what we had. That’s what brings us all here isn’t it?
JONATHAN
Brought me.
JOSHUA
And me.
JOSPEHINA
My hands that once held books are rubbed raw with soil and then made hard by time. Bend, stoop, twist, pull. Hot sun, heavy water bottle at my hip. I used to wear a skirt and heels. Now everyday we wear, jean-cotton long sleeve shirt,
JONATHAN
t-shirt underneath because the sun burns through the long sleeve shirt,
JOSHUA
Baseball cap,
JOSEPHINA
Two bandanas, one for your neck and one for your face, when the wind blows up the sand, or the pesticides are sprayed over you, onto you, into you. Shoes don’t matter.
JOSHUA
Strong shoes.
JOSEPHINA
But they will be full of dirt in one day. Covered, full, become dirt.
Takes another drink of water and then hums a few lines of Old Oaken Bucket.
JOSEPHINA
To handle these living things, this food, for you. The early winter sunset reminds me of home. I miss it. I’m unhappy here. This is not my land. But this is my family. You are all my family.
JOSHUA and JONATHAN
Thank you.
JOSEPHINA
And now, this is my home. This will not last forever. Nothing lasts forever.
JO as farm owner
Josephina, I hear Rueben is moving away?
JOSEPHINA
He got into UC Berkeley. He will be more brilliant than his father and I ever were.
JO
But I hear you’ve been in school too.
JOSEPHINA
Yes, sir.
JO
You’ll be leaving us soon.
JOSEPHINA
Not for several months.
JO
To be a teacher’s aid, is it?
JOSEPHINA
Yes. If I’m lucky, my certificate goes through in ten days.
JO
We’ll miss you. After eighteen years, but maybe we’ll see you around.
JOSEPHINA
I’ll miss it here too. The smell, the sounds, cold winter chills and endless summer sun. I’ll miss these guys, this family, and this land, but I won’t miss this job. I’ll take the land with me. The land is burned into me, these farms. These million farms. The land is a part of me. Goodbye.
JO
Goodbye Josephina.
ALL
Goodbye.
FQ sings
It’s a song, a sigh of the weary.
Hard times, hard times, come again no more.
Many days you have lingered around my cabin door.
Hard times, come again no more.
Farmers quartette exits during last line of song. Music can play one more unsung chorus of song.
END
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