ON STAGE IN SPOLETO

FRANKEE  WAS WEARING A FAVORITE BLUE OUTFIT THAT USUALLY BROUGHT HER COMPLIMENTS.  BUT THE BIGWIGS IN CHARGE OF THE FESTIVAL SEEMED TO BE AVOIDING HER.

 

They were seated here and there in the empty theater.

 Menotti reset his watch. Barber sorted  festival pamphlets, while the famous Benjamin Britten was studying a piece of sheet music, talking out loud to himself. 

 FRANKEE WAS  SWEATING. It was a hot afternoon  and everyone was standing too close to her. She kept wishing she'd borrowed her husbands double-breasted jackets --it would hide what she was wearing.    

Suddenly, out of the blue, somebody said "Cut the damn introduction--it's redundant." Menotti nodded. Britten vociferrously agreed. 

FRANKEE AT THE EDGE OF THE STAGE, A POWERFUL GIRL-WOMAN SAID "YOU INVITED ME  HERE.  I CREATED WHAT YOU ASKED ME TO CREATE ABOUT THE WRITER AS THE WAR BEGAN --YOU'LL HEAR AND SEE HIM.  I WILL NOT CUT ANYTHING. 

THE PRE- REORDED MUSIC FILLED THEATER AS FRANKEE, IN HER "ACTRESS TONE OF VOICE," INTRODUCED AN IMAGINARY  FAMILY.  

       "MY MOTHER--" (a spotlight fades up. as if encircling her).  "MY FATHER--" (spotlight comes on).  "MY UNCLE--" (another spot comes on).  "MY AUNT --(another spotlight) 

The music has sounds of street car horns honking as welll as cars. Frankee enacts in childlike dance movments  that includes  somersalts, childish  turns, and cartwheels. The vision of those circles on the floor becomes a real reality.   

The light that encircles each member of the writer's family  remains on, and the family is always there as writer  James Agee words as danced (mimed) by  Frankee as he recalls the summer of 1915.