The action takes place in Indian Territory, now Oklahoma, in the
year 1906
_Settings designed by_ LEWIS BARRINGTON
_Costumes designed by_ GERTRUDE BROWS
_Sets and costumes executed by the Laboratory Theater Workshop
Property Man_ MORTON BROWN
The Director and Actors are deeply grateful to Mme. Maria Ouspenskaya
for the invaluable assistance she gave in the preparation of this
production.
FOREWORD
This play came to us late in the season of 1926-1927. Produced by
George Auerbach at the American Laboratory Theater in New York, it
attracted some attention during April and May, and survived without
serious damage the ordeal of criticism by several of the front-line
reviewers. With two or three exceptions, however, the notices showed
little understanding of what Mr. Riggs was trying to do.
That is one reason why I am presuming to add these few words to the
dramatist’s text. _Big Lake_ is that rarest of things, a poetic drama
that is at once poetry and drama. To one of his later plays Mr. Riggs
has given the title _Sump’n Like Wings_, and I can think of no words
that so accurately describe what I felt when, over a year ago, I
read the manuscript of _Big Lake_. There is a winged lightness in
the words that the poet puts into the mouths of his young people, an
ecstasy born of the sheer joy of being alive. How poor a thing is the
mere “observation” of a clever playwright beside the deeper, more
incisive and highly intuitive scenes in _Big Lake_!
In calling Mr. Riggs a poet (I refer here not to his formal
verse-making, but to his plays) I am not forgetting that poetry in
the theater is a different thing from the poetry you read in a book:
Mr. Riggs’ plays are stage pieces; the poetry in them is never a
matter of mere words, but an integral part of the speeches uttered
and the gestures made by the characters, directing each scene and
permeating the whole. It lies first in the writer’s conception of a
harmonic entity, and floods it from beginning to end.
Mr. Riggs’ three full-length plays are the work of a young man who
is still close enough to his youth to remember and understand those
fleeting moments of exaltation and depression that constitute the
glory and the tragedy of adolescence. In _Big Lake_, more especially
than in _A Lantern To See By_ and _Sump’n Like Wings_, Mr. Riggs has
been able on occasion to look at the world about him through the
eyes of a child: can you not feel in the second scene of the first
act something of the wonder and terror of the more wildly romantic
stories of the Brothers Grimm?
If this Foreword were a study, I should go on to point out how
Lynn Riggs has taken the folk-material and the idiom of his native
district and skillfully made of them a rich medium of expression,
and explain how, with only the slightest technical manipulation, he
has reproduced the subtle rhythms of everyday speech. Then I should
also have to take him to task for an occasional awkwardness in the
management of his plots. But my purpose here is not to criticize:
it is to point out to you a new American dramatist, whose work is
permeated by an odd and strangely haunting beauty.
BARRETT H. CLARK.
_August, 1927._
PART ONE
CHARACTERS
BETTY
LLOYD
“BUTCH” ADAMS
ELLY
SHERIFF
JOE }
PLANK } _deputies_
MISS MEREDITH
BUD BICKEL
THE DAVIS BOY
COUNTRY-SCHOOL BOYS AND GIRLS
BIG LAKE
THE WOODS