Appalachian Plays Have Character

So last time I did a blog, there were dissenting opinions about the subject matter. My standpoint was that Shenkkan’s characters were stereotypical and one dimensional. Others disagreed and claimed that it didn’t matter that the characters were all negative traits with no real attempt to show their better sides, because it was in the name of entertainment. In response, I proposed a project to investigate if Appalachian playwrights perpetuated stereotypes and constructed shallow characters for the sake of keeping it entertaining, or if they cast aside the tired old stock characters and showed the better side of the Appalachian culture. Interestingly enough, I have found a mix of results. And—gasp!—the non-stereotype-perpetuating pieces were just as good if not better.

I found a treasure trove of plays by Appalachian playwrights (although most were from West Virginia) in the Folklife Center in Fairmont. Amongst them were Jean Battlo’s The Little Theater’s Production of “Hamlet”, Julia Davis’s Possessions, Clyde Ware’s one-act Best in Town, and eight plays by VictorDepta (of which I have read three and part and now have personal copies that I may read at my leisure [Thank you very much, Victor Depta and Phyllis Moore]).

Most of the plays I read did their best to combat the stereotypes surrounding Appalachia and its people. While still fraught with dialects and colloquialisms, they presented a sweeter side of Appalachians. Hard-working, caring, friendly. Battlo’s play even involved a New York director being sent to Kimball, WV to direct a community play and dreading every second of it. And the longer she stayed, the more she realized the people weren’t just hicks and hillbillies content to sit around with their shotguns and sip moonshine—these were real people with hopes and dreams and goals in life. People who were kind enough to welcome her whole-heartedly into their lives even when she was resistant to working with them and downright mean on occasion.

Victor Depta’s Egg of the World brought a very interesting perspective to my project. Similar in basic premise to Battlo’s play, Egg of the World involved a director and stage-manager from Ohio and New York respectively coming to a small town in WV to direct a play showing good things about the state. What they got were a sibling set of three who were so stereotypical that all you could do is slam your head against the table. They were poor, uneducated, religious, orphans (dad died in a slate fall, mom ran off with another man), and there was an entire section about their incest. I loved this play because at the end of it, the siblings had been so horribly stereotypical of Appalachians that the director and stage-manager looked at each other and wondered if the kids were messing with them.

Possessionsby Julia Davis was the only one that I could really compare to Schenkkan’s The Kentucky Cycle. As suggested by the name, the play was about greed. The greedy coal mine operator and a woman who would do anything to maintain the lifestyle to which she had become accustomed. But even in this play, the characters showed depth—not everything is black and white and it certainly wasn’t completely black like The Kentucky Cycle. Even though this play had a somewhat negative view of Appalachians, I include it, because, unlike Schenkkan, Davis showed an evolution of the characters and their greed. They were not greedy just because the author said they were. There was a logical progression of and explanation for their desires. The characters were not one dimensional.

-J