Richards The Grace Abounding

ISBN: 979-8-3509-9340-0
Verlag: BookBaby
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 124 Seiten

Reihe: The Grace Abounding

'Imagine, sir, being born into a world in which nearly every thing you see around you is morally wanting.' It is 1722. David Wellbery, a Puritan ship captain who works for the Royal African Company, has just been told he must take command of a slave ship, the Avery. He takes the commission, but his conscience weighs on him, and he frees the Africans on board in a mutiny against the Company. Then, with ship and crew, he roams the Atlantic coast, freeing slaves in transit from Africa to Colonial America. He renames the ship 'The Grace Abounding,' after John Bunyan's spiritual classic. So the pirates in this play are actually liberators. The British and the Spanish join in league to hunt him down as he makes his way north along the Atlantic coast. Working with a ship redesigned by his master engineer, Augustine Kincaid, a slave whose former master had trained him in architecture and engineering, they evade capture and free many enslaved Africans by using his own intelligence to overcome the odds. The play has another point of location in American history. David Wellbery is in love with the daughter of Cotton Mather, the judge of the famous witch trials of 1692. In the last act, The Grace Abounding makes its way to Boston, where Wellbery and his crew are put on trial. The judge is Cotton Mather himself, who now, in old age, is haunted by what he has done. Wellbery and Kincaid and his crew plead their case, and Mather delivers a final judgment.

Thomas Richards taught literature at Harvard. He has written four novels, The End of the Line, Pretty Peggy-O, Mrs. Sinden, and Zero Tolerance, as well as a long poem, Antigone at Antietam.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Richards, Thomas

Leseproben

ACT I SCENE I — The Gulf of Somalia. The U.S.S. Hawthorne and a Merchant Marine ship. A caption says, ‘The Gulf of Somalia. May 202-.’ We see the console on the bridge of an American Destroyer, the U.S.S. Hawthorne, gaining on a stalled Merchant Marine ship, represented in facade across the stage. The merchant ship flies a Dutch flag. American sailors and officers at the helm of a light Destroyer of the Farragut class. The console faces upstage. LT. SHIELDS That’s it, sir. Dead in the water. CAPT. BARNES Odd. No sign of it having been taken. It’s just— there. A beat. Ready your boarding party, Lieutenant. Two boarding parties of Navy Seals coming in through the aisle entrances. The open stage here represents the sea. At the back of the stage is the structural skeleton of a Merchant Marine ship, showing, in abstract form, its hull, deck, and bridge. The boarding parties approaching the boat. Ropes going over the sides. Seals shimmying up and fanning out across all decks. Then: Seals going down the outer deck, looking for pirates or crew, kicking open doors. FIRST SEAL All clear. SECOND SEAL All clear. THIRD SEAL All clear. And so on down the deck. The last door is locked. They force it open. The Seals rush in. A small crew of about five huddled in the corner. FIRST SEAL This all of you? MERCHANT MARINE CAPT. Yes. FIRST SEAL They—where are they? MERCHANT MARINE CAPT. I—I don’t know. Seals rushing up the stairs to the bridge, a balcony above the deck disclosed now by lighting, kicking open the door, covering each other, entering firing. After a beat, six distinct shots heard, each in pairs of two. After another beat, a Seal emerges with something long and thin rolled in a white cloth. He unrolls it. We see two very old knives. SEAL ON BRIDGE This—was all they had. LT. SHIELDS Two knives? FIRST SEAL On radio from below decks. Lower decks secured. All hands accounted for. A hissing beat. Permission to stand down. LT. SHIELDS Permission granted. They signal to the destroyer counsel. The Captain crosses the stage, as though in a launch. From the deck above a metal staircase drops down, and the Captain jumps aboard and bounds upwards to the main deck. He is met at the side of the ship by the Lieutenant. LT. SHIELDS Sir. There were only three of them, sir. CAPT. BARNES Three? You’ve got to be kidding. Considers the vastness of the large freighter. Three men took—this whole ship? LT. SHIELDS They didn’t even appear to be armed, sir. Unwraps a rag holding two unused, very old knives. I mean, except for these knives— CAPT. BARNES You’re saying three men—with just these knives— took this ship? MERCHANT MARINE CAPT. All I can say is—they seemed to have a genius for piracy. CAPT. BARNES Where are the bodies? LT. SHIELDS On the bridge. Two were head shots. But the old man is still alive—barely. CAPT. BARNES Old man? LT. SHIELDS He doesn’t look quite like the others. Not as—Somali. And he’s very old. They walk up a flight of stairs to the bridge. Inside are two Somalis, splayed out, dead, shot in the head. An Old West African Man is slumped in the Captain’s chair, clutching an old leather book in his hand, two wound channels visible just above his heart. His skin should appear several tints whiter than the other Somalis, even though his facial features are fuller and more rounded. CAPT. BARNES Get the medics in here. OLD WEST AFRICAN MAN A Captain. And an American. This is more than I could have hoped for. I—I am so glad. CAPT. BARNES What is you name? OLD WEST AFRICAN MAN Haltingly. Augustine. It has been passed down, these ten generations. CAPT. BARNES You with the Mogadishu group? OLD WEST AFRICAN MAN I represent no group. CAPT. BARNES What about—them? OLD WEST AFRICAN MAN I asked them to take me here. Coughs up blood, eyes blurring, near death. I barely know their names. OLD WEST AFRICAN MAN Captain. Please. Coughs up more blood. I want— I have— CAPT. BARNES Gently. Try not to talk. Rest. OLD WEST AFRICAN MAN There is no time. Grasps the old leather book. You must—take—this. CAPT. BARNES You don’t have to give me anything, Mr. Augustine. OLD WEST AFRICAN MAN But I want to. It is—very old. He hands the Captain the old small leather book, its cover smeared with blood. OLD WEST AFRICAN MAN It is my story—but it is also yours. CAPT. BARNES Mine? OLD WEST AFRICAN MAN The story of your country. Of its first, best men. Just take it. Coughs up more blood. And undertake to promise me—that you will read it. CAPT. BARNES IS it in English? OLD WEST AFRICAN MAN Proudly. The King’s English. The most supple ever spoken. CAPT. BARNES Who wrote it then— OLD WEST AFRICAN MAN It tells—of The Grace— CAPT. BARNES Grace? What do you mean, grace? OLD WEST AFRICAN MAN As if he’s seeing it in his mind’s eye. The Grace Abounding. Captain Barnes is about to ask him what that is, but sees that the Old West African Man has lost the light in his eyes, and died, having pushed the book into the palm of the Captain’s hand. Lieutenant Shields comes back in with a medic. LT. SHIELDS What’d he say? CAPTAIN BARNES I dunno. Something about—grace. LT. SHIELDS Maybe he was a Christian. Lot of them are, you know. CAPTAIN BARNES Shakes his head to the waiting medic. Maybe. Secure the ship, Lieutenant. I will be in my quarters. The Captain turns toward the door. The medic starts to wrap the bodies and bag them. Lights dim. A light discloses a small room near the console. The American Captain settling into his bunk, opening the book and beginning to read. The Chorus comes onto center stage. The Chorus is the Old West African Man, unwounded, now in a white robe. As Chorus, he speaks here in the voice of his ancestor Augustine Kincaid, who wrote the book. His words are a voiceover of what the Captain is reading. CHORUS In the time of good King George, the second of that name, it was my fortune, though scarce did I know it then, to have been taken in slavery, and thence to have been transported along the Middle Passage by a ship, the Avery, commanded by a very remarkable man, who was to become, in time, my friend, my Captain, the mate of my soul, and the godfather to the first of my children. The Captain stretches out, absorbed in reading it, turning a page. He touches the intercom next to his bed. CAPTAIN BARNES Orders not to be disturbed. INTERCOM Bridge acknowledging. The Chorus begins to speak exactly when the Captain starts to read again. Again, he speaks in the voice of his ancestor, Augustine Kincaid. CHORUS I have lived in a time that most men have mostly preferfed not to remember, and I have waited until late in life to allow myself the full force of memory to take it in. The time yet seems a wonderment to me, for it was a time when time seemed to flow backwards rather than forwards. Men, men such as you and I, of flesh and blood, free since the time of the Romans, now came again under the lash of slavery. I know not who thought of going back to it. But when that I came to man’s estate, it was a done thing. Men of my color were shut up against the world, and I, partly through my own folly and partly through the folly of others, also came to be taken on this Middle Passage to the place called America. The Captain closes his eyes, visualizing it, seeing it all. The lights dim, except in his quarters. SCENE 2 — The Avery. The stage shows the deck of a slaver, the Avery. A caption above says, THE NORTH ATLANTIC. MARCH 1722. This sailing ship looks like any other merchantman of the time, a ten-gun frigate of about two hundred tons. CHORUS Continuing voiceover. The ship as I remember it was good ship. The Avery had three sails and ten guns, a crew of twenty-six and a force of ten marines from the Royal African Company, who, if truth...