The Botanic Garden and My Old Kentucky Plays
Kentucky. Known today for its bluegrass, horse racing, and bourbon; it’s very name, embedded in Iroquois history, means Land of Tomorrow. The song birds are the sweetest, thoroughbreds fleetest, wrote James Mulligan, “The landscape is the grandest–And politics—the damnedest In Kentucky.”
It’s a hard look that we must face at European settlers, frightened by differences in heritage, religion, and skin, unable to respect the beauty in other races. They did not understand the sexual orientation of God’s creation. “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it,” wrote George Santayana. We romanticize the old days maybe because they are behind us and can no longer harm us. And from the good that was there, we build a better tomorrow.
Here are five historical dramas of Kentucky:
The Botanic Garden
Horace Holley arrives in Kentucky with dreams to create his own university which is deemed to be the Harvard of the West. The faculty he chooses includes an eccentric European botanist who believes that every great university must have its own botanical garden. Dreams collide within the struggles between religion, government, and ambition. A play about Constantine S. Rafinesque and Transylvania University in Lexington, Kentucky.
Sabbath of the Soul
Three weary travelers meet one evening at a railroad station awaiting arrival of the train carrying the one person most influential to them. Remembrances of this one exceptional life help them come to terms with their own mortality and purpose. A play about the life of Emily H. Tubman and Frankfort, Kentucky.
Emma of Elmwood
An architect, hired to demolish and replace a beloved house, is haunted into rebuilding his own life. A play about Emma P. Watts and Eastern Kentucky University of Richmond, Kentucky.
The Dust of Summer
A woman imprisoned by her domestic life discovers a runaway soldier seeking refuge from himself, both trapped between courage and duty. A play about Pleasant View Farm and The Battle of Richmond in Madison County, Kentucky.
The Two Villages
After years of engagement and unable to set a date for a wedding, a struggling painter is confronted by his fiancé as they journey to understand the obstacles that have plagued their relationship. Being true to one’s art comes with a price. A play about Kentucky’s own impressionistic painter Paul Sawyier of Frankfort, Kentucky.
THE AUTHOR ORDER A COPY NOW
Other plays available for production from Richard Cavendish at drrussellrrechenbach@gmail.com
Ten Minute Plays
2 men and 1 woman
A New York City restaurant. Valentine’s Day, 1927. Two young lovers, Helen, an American nurse, and Charles, a British Lord, are unable to escape their sudden infatuation. Their lives from separate continents create an inescapable barrier.
2 men. An old farmhouse, mid-Nineteenth Century Lexington, Kentucky. Widower Madison Conyers Johnson purchases a farm with an unexpected enslaved family. Conyers, the white attorney and brother-in-law of abolitionist Cassius Clay, and the enslaved foreman of the farm, “Fish,” overcome their situation and develop a lasting friendship.
2 men. The gardens of Gethsemane Abbey, Bardstown, Kentucky. While on a silent retreat, a visitor discovers a stranded young man with an endearing and complicated story.
4 men and 1 woman. Living room. Four friends meet once a month for martinis; the only thing they share in common is their love and past experience of tap dancing.
1 man and 1 male voice. Bed. One of two brothers returning to his old bedroom and bed remembers Christmas Eve conversations with his brother.
One Acts Plays
2 men and 1 woman. Attic of an old colonial inn. Andy and Amy, a middle-aged couple, take ownership of a grandmother’s historic inn. Billy-Drew, the hired hand on the estate, fills the couple in on the strange requests left behind.
9 men and 3 women. The Pleasant View Farm, Kingston, Kentucky, July 31 and August 25-26, 1862. A woman imprisoned by her domestic life discovers a runaway soldier seeking refuge from himself, both trapped between courage and duty. A play about Pleasant View Farm and The Battle of Richmond in Madison County, Kentucky
2 men and 1 woman. A room in a nursing home. A nurse directs Tom, a pastor visiting the care facility, to a lonely man, Milward, who plays with tiny figurines. Milward, once a big executive, is now a small frail forgotten shadow of a man, but he relates a story of huge and frightening proportions.
2 men and 2 women. Houseboat on the Kentucky River, June 23, 1910. After years of engagement and unable to set a date for a wedding, a struggling painter is confronted by his fiancé as they journey to understand the obstacles that have plagued their relationship. Being true to one’s art comes with a price. A play about Kentucky’s own impressionistic painter Paul Sawyer of Frankfort, Kentucky.
1 woman and 1 man. Wedding Chapel office. Melony, a woman in her forties about to be married, plans her upcoming wedding with David, the wedding chapel director, but with bizarre requirements.
Full Length Plays
6 men and 2 women, extras for Soldiers and Monks. Lake Atitlan, Guatemala, 1524. Four tribes of Guatemala, unable to unite, are doomed to fight against one another by the Spanish conquistadors. Tecum Uman crusades to protect and unite his people, his strength protected by his spirit guide, the Quetzal bird. When Uman is killed, Don Pedro’s assistant Argueta seeks to force the love of Uman’s wife, Mariposa. Through magic of the native people, Argueta leaves Pedro’s armies and seeks the monastery. As a monk, Argueta, helps the people come together and embrace diversity. A story of Lake Atitlan and why it shines.
4 men and 4 women. A chateau in France. Three married couples receive all expense-paid trips to a renewal of vows ceremony in France at the home of the priest who married them years before. A play of marriage, mystery, and murder.
2 men and 2 women. Dressing room of the Pekin Theater in Chicago, Illinois, 1906. Vaudeville performers Amos and Andy Tribble confront one another with their love and hate of the stage. While Amos returns to the farm, Andy is left to reinvent his stage presence or lose it.
4 men and 3 women. Shaker Village, Harrodsburg, Kentucky 1812 and 1999. You can love the music of over a hundred years ago, but does its composer come with it? Enslaved Patsy Williamson, is not only gifted with freedom and equality at Shaker Village, but also spiritual songs; music connects her to the love of Andy, separated from her by almost two hundred year. These star-crossed lovers discover a hidden portal to bring them together.
3 men and 3 women. Elmwood in Richmond, Kentucky, around the turn of the 21st Century. An architect hired to demolish and replace a beloved house, is haunted into rebuilding his own life. A play about Emma P. Watts and Eastern Kentucky University of Richmond, Kentucky.
6 men and four women. 8 adults and two children. 4 puppets. London, England, 1896. Albert Finch brings home a monkey whose habit of helping creates chaos, but the very thing his family needs. Inspired by a story of and promised to Pamela L. Travers. This is a play that Mrs. Travers personally asked me to write as an adaptation of her book, Friend Monkey.
9 men and 6 women, or with double roles: 6 men and 4 women.
The Presidential Box of Ford’s Theater, Washington D.C. on Good Friday, April 14, 1865 Actress and theater manager Laura Keene, has been rehearsing her production while John Wilkes Booth has come to rehearse a secret assassination. Both share a past and potential future conspiracy.
Pioneer Christmas in Milford
8 men and 8 women. The old log meeting house, December 1788. The township of Milford, the first county seat of Madison, Kentucky, unites to celebrate Christmas with a plot to catch and stop a group of marauding bandits.
6 men and 6 women. Frankfort Train station, Frankfort, Kentucky. June 1885. Three weary travelers meet one evening at a railroad station awaiting arrival of the train carrying the one person most influential to them. Remembrances of this one exceptional life help them come to terms with their own mortality and purpose. A play about the life of Emily H. Tubman and Frankfort, Kentucky.
15 men and 3 women. Lexington, Kentucky, 1818-1825. Horace Holly arrives in Kentucky with dreams to create his own university which is deemed to be the Harvard of the West. The faculty he chooses includes an eccentric European botanist who believes that every great university must have its own botanical garden. Dreams collide within the struggles between religion, government, and ambition. A play about Constantine S. Rafinesque and Transylvania University in Lexington, Kentucky.
8 men and 5 women, 3 ghosts. A Georgian townhouse in London, England, December 1844. It has been a year since the start of Ebenezer Scrooge’s dementia and he is penniless from his generosity. Little Lille, a homeless ward to Scrooge, is gifted with a second sight and foretells the coming of a Christmas guest who Scrooge is convinced is his old partner Jacob Marley. American friends Della and Tom have been hired to arrange the Christmas dinner. Tim Cratchit is learning to walk again. Nephew Fred is convinced his uncle needs to be committed.
A sequel to Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. O Henry’s Gift of the Magi and Hans Christian Anderson’s The Little Matchgirl collide with Dickens’ classic Ghost Story.
The Great Kentucky Tragedy
11 men and 3 women. Frankfort and Glasgow, Kentucky, 1825. The “murder for love tale” of Colonel Solomon Sharpe by attorney Jeroboam Beauchamp that quenched the world’s thirst for romance and intrigue. An adaptation of Edgar Allen Poe’s first and unfinished drama, brought back to its Nineteenth Century time and Kentucky setting.
5 men and 3 women. The Cotswolds. A contemporary Passion Story using the text from The Gospel of Thomas, discovered near Nag Hammadi, Egypt, 1945. Also available in a musical version.
