Metropolitan Playhouse
Presents
The Virtual Playhouse

A Screened Reading
of

THE CLOD

Written by LEWIS BEACH
Directed by ALEX ROE

Featuring
BRAD FRAIZER, DAVID LOGAN RANKIN, SUZANNE SAVOY, JOSHUA DAVID SCARLETT,
& THOMAS VORSTEG

Special Talkback Guest ERIN STONEKING, Assistant Professor of Gender & Race Studies, University of Alabama

October 3, 2020 8 p.m.

www.metropolitanplayhouse.org/virtualplayhouse

Who is “The Clod”? Why, it’s you and me, brother. All the average folk just minding their own business, trying to get by in life. Never heard of the “big picture”, son. Now move along.

Old Thaddeus sits in his chair, smoking his pipe. It’s a September night in 1863. Wife Mary comes in with a pail of water and a candle. The two live alone in their little house near the border between The North & The South. Mary’s fed up with all the soldiers that pass by. North or South, she doesn’t give a hoot. All she knows is that they steal her potatoes and annoy the heck out of her.

Thaddeus takes a more casual view, which can best be described as “Oh, well”. He’s got his loaded shotgun by his side. Not for fighting, but for shooting birds, should any fly by. But that would be during daytime. It’s night now, time to go upstairs to bed.

Soon their unlocked front door opens silently. It’s an injured Union soldier looking for food, water, and a safe place to rest. The Confederates are right behind him. He quickly finds a place to hide before loud knocking fills the room. It’s a Confederate soldier and his pal, Dick. They aren’t taking no for an answer.

The flustered old couple come downstairs to face with these two. The soldier is belligerent, rude, and threatening. “Where’s he hiding?” he demands. The couple have no idea what he’s talking about. Mary is subject to endless verbal abuse. Stupid woman, hag, and worse. She repeats and repeats that all she wants is to get some sleep!

During a safe moment, the Union soldier reveals himself, saying that she must help him. He carries a message that will save thousands of lives. Her annoyed response is that he’s keeping her awake and just go away! He dives back into hiding as the two Confederates barge in, demanding that she cook them up a meal. Everyone has a breaking point. Even little old farm ladies. I say no more.

The play’s author was born long after the Civil War, and his parents took no part in it. He wrote this play in 1913, the fiftieth anniversary of the Civil War’s end. It was a time for parades, statues, and celebrations of the fact that the U.S. was united in peace. That whole freeing-the-slaves thing had magically faded away. African-Americans were being Jim-Crowed and share-cropped. It was all about white people and the fact that the north and the south were embracing each other again. The ultimate irony of this play is that the author and his bourgeoise friends were clods, too. A unique historical viewpoint from the Metropolitan Playhouse, doing what it’s famous for once again.

-Karen D’Onofrio-