Thalassa My Heart
3 m, 2 w approximate running time 1 hour 50 minutes
Back in the 80s I was lucky enough to score a couple of weeks in one of the dune shacks on the back shore of Provincetown. Thalassa is one of the 17 rustic cottages that pepper this barren landscape, standing apart and isolated and facing the Atlantic Ocean. The shacks have no electricity, running water or toilets, and as there were no cell phones back then, my isolation was complete. I found refuge and inspiration there, as had many notable artists back in the 1930s and 40s: Eugene O’Neill, Susan Glaspell, John Dos Passos, the critic Edmund Wilson, as well as my good friend, the late Hazel Hawthorne Werner, who was only in her 20s when she wrote her novel SALT HOUSE (1929), an account of her bohemian adventures in the dunes. |
My play is centered around Peter - a Provincetown “washashore” who’s isolated himself in grief over his terminally ill daughter; Camille, a French native settled in Provincetown, and in love with Peter; and Ray, Peter’s high-school English teacher, whom Camille has discovered in town and brought with her out to the dunes hoping his presence will knock Peter out of his funk. The two additional characters, Maria and Bill, are envoys of the Massachusetts Historical Council, here to determine whether these shacks deserve to be preserved as “historic” sites, of whether they should be razed according to the wishes of their landlord, The National Seashore. This play was produced to terriric reviews in Provincetown and got me my first agent.
Productions - Readings - Awards
Provincetown Theater Company - first production - July, 1992
Productions - Readings - Awards
Provincetown Theater Company - first production - July, 1992