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Overview
Two dazzling dramas on American themes from the Nobel laureate Derek Walcott, Walker and Ghost Dance.
On a cold winter's day on the Dakota plains, Catherine Weldon receives a caller, Kicking Bear, bringing news of Indian rebellion. In the fort nearby, a tiny community splinters apart over how to react. In Ghost Dance, first performed in 1989, Walcott turns a story with a foregone conclusion -- Sitting Bull and his Sioux followers will die at the hands of the Army and Indian agents -- into a portrait of life at a crossroads of American history.
In Walker, an opera first performed in 1992 and revised for its revival in 2001, Walcott shifts his attention east, taking for his subject David Walker, the nineteenth-century black abolitionist. In Walcott 's hands Walker becomes a classical hero for his people: a leader who is also a poet.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781466880498 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Farrar, Straus and Giroux |
| Publication date: | 09/09/2014 |
| Sold by: | Macmillan |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 144 |
| File size: | 245 KB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
WALKER AND THE GHOST DANCE
PLAYS
By DEREK WALCOTT
FARRAR, STRAUS AND GIROUX
Copyright © 2002 Derek Walcott.
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 0-374-52814-4
SCENE ONEBrattle Street. Walker's house. Thanksgiving. Early snow. A FIGURE in a long black coat waits under a streetlamp. GARRISON is going towards the house.
FIGURE
Sir! Forgive me.
GARRISON
Yes?
FIGURE
Is that David Walker's house?
GARRISON
It is.
(The FIGURE walks up to the window, then returns to
GARRISON.)
FIGURE
And that machine is the press?
GARRISON
Yes.
FIGURE
That now does the work of the devil. Keep the niggers from printing machines. Deliver us from that evil.
GARRISON
I don't quite know what that means.
FIGURE
Sir, I stand here swaying with hunger because of my brotherhood's vow. I won't eat until I see that nigger spread-eagled in the snow. I'm as starved as a crow in winter cawing on afield-fence, keeping its keen yellow eye on all who leave and enter. I've learnt to wait quietly until what must happen, happens.
(The FIGURE waits in the shadows; GARRISON approaches it.)
GARRISON
Come into the light, this damned street's cold and dark.
FIGURE
No. The light is too late. Too late to do business.
GARRISON
What business? What business?
FIGURE
You're asking me a lot. The pamphlet must not be printed.
GARRISON
Whom do you represent, sir?
(Pause)
Sir, whom do you represent?
FIGURE
You insist on an answer? I go where I am sent. Unless you want him dead, the pamphlet must not be printed.
GARRISON
You've got a Southern accent. Are you from where, Georgia?
FIGURE
Mr. Garrison, I can change my accent if it'd make you happier.
GARRISON
You know damned well why I ask.
FIGURE
Why?
GARRISON
There're certain men from Georgia who're out to skin his hide, who've put out a reward, sir, to capture or have him killed. If you're not their representative who want him dead or alive out here in this freezing cold, leave the darkness, for the light. Come with me, come inside. Don't stand there like a raven in the afternoon snow, or a black crow in the cotton. Come into his house, now.
FIGURE
And, you, don't come any closer; don't leave the light you're in. I've got a pistol, a revolver that could send you spinning right here in the fresh snow. I am not from a Southern state, sir, I represent a state. The fact is, I'm a senator and my republic is ...
GARRISON
What?
FIGURE
Death.
GARRISON
I'm going to call the police.
FIGURE
What is the charge?
GARRISON
Loitering with intent. To murder. You are an assassin.
FIGURE
Necessity is my only sin. I am as white as the snow, sir, and, Mr. Garrison, as innocent. I'll be gone when it stops snowing.
GARRISON
Nevertheless I'm going.
(The FIGURE stumbles, staggers, collapses to his knees on the snow.)
What's wrong?
(The FIGURE draws his pistol.)
FIGURE
Stay back! It'll pass; it'll pass. It was the smell of food. The smell of Thanksgiving.
GARRISON
Do you need help? Do you need to lie down?
FIGURE
No. No. It goes. It comes in waves. I have not eaten for four days. When he dies, my fast will be broken. Then I can resume living.
(He rises to his feet, swaying.)
GARRISON
I'm going to have you arrested. Arrested, sir! Do you hear?
FIGURE
Go! I know how to disappear. You call the police, sir.
(He puts the pistol away, walks backwards into the dark. As he exits)
By the time they get here, I'll be invisible. I'll be white air.
(GARRISON runs into the dark alley, searching and shouting.)
GARRISON
You can't stop us! If you come back, the police!
(He runs towards the house, pounds on the door. The door is locked tight. He rattles the doorknob, looks at the upstairs window.)
David! David! Open up! David, it's William Garrison.
(To himself)
There's a lamp in the upstairs window. Eliza! Are you in there? I'm out here in the damned snow. Listen. I've gone to fetch the ...
(To himself)
No. Better if they didn't know. If you can hear me, Eliza, don't open to anyone else. I have to go to the police about a certain business. Keep this door locked now. Tell David I have some news.
(He hurries across the street through the piled drifts. Behind the curtains we see a lamp descend the stairs and come to a downstairs window. A woman, ELIZA, parts the curtains and looks out. The FIGURE is there, under the streetlamp; then the FIGURE steps back into the alley. We enter the parlour of the house. It is also the store where WALKER sells used clothes from racks. There is a small counter and a hand-operated printing press with a table with paper and typefaces. ELIZA enters with a lamp.)
ELIZA (To herself)
Oh, David, David, come inside. (WALKER enters, carrying kindling; he places it by the hearth.) Where were you? Where've you been?
WALKER
In the back yard to fetch some kindling.
ELIZA
Good. To light the fire in the hearth as well as our hearts, David. Today is Thanksgiving.
WALKER
What are we giving thanks for?
ELIZA
For being alive. For freedom. For being able to see our breath still. (She returns to the window.)
WALKER
What you keep on looking out for? Is there something you scared of?
ELIZA
Today carries a terrible fear. I thought I saw something move. Am I seeing things? I don't know. I thought I saw something just now, like a raven walking in the snow. Like a black crow hopping in the cotton; but it goes every time I turn. I can't see his colour, his face, but it been walking round and round like a buzzard, circling this place, and the snow don't make no sound.
WALKER
This ain't the South, Liza, please.
ELIZA
Is he still there? Can you see him?
(WALKER goes to the window. Sees him. Lies.)
WALKER
No.
ELIZA
He walks with that slow rhythm of a crow walking carefully.
WALKER
I'm sick of this thing. I see only snow blowing, white air. It's a blizzard, not a buzzard out there; it's snowing and the street is dim, and you see strange shadows in winter. Come on, you just had a bad dream.
ELIZA
I see you lying on the white ground. That's the dream I have, David.
WALKER
And you go be my Bathsheba?
ELIZA
No, I'm Eliza, your wife. But, David, I know what the name mean, and the name go fit your life.
WALKER
Boy-killer of Goliath, David. And you ain't go be my Bathsheba?
ELIZA
David, I'm Eliza, your wife!
WALKER
David, the harp-player. David, the king!
ELIZA
Whose harp got only one string and who got to keep harping, harping that what ain't right is wrong.
WALKER
David, the giant-slayer. Liza, my head's getting grayer. I'm not no stripling no more. Maybe I'm David, the nay-sayer, but possession is nine-tenths of the law, and the law can't prevent our dreams.
ELIZA
I been here since dawn whitened the window and wondering where you were just now, what you was dreaming, and I get so frighten of today, Lord, I don't know. You got to tell me your dream.
Excerpted from WALKER AND THE GHOST DANCE by DEREK WALCOTT. Copyright © 2002 by Derek Walcott. Excerpted by permission. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Table of Contents
| Foreword | vii | |
| Walker | 1 | |
| The Ghost Dance | 115 |