House, Divided
 La Tempestad
 The Ballad of John Wesley Reed
 Girl Science
 The Allure of Oriental Wisdom
 Memorial Day (formerly Varia)
 Pride of the Lion
 The Dostoyevsky Man


 Monica for Chanukah
 Angie and Arnie Sanguine
 Edward and Ellie Supine
 The Lion Eats His Lunch
 The Lion in His Lair
 The Lion Leaves His Mark
 Prayers


 But Who's Counting?
 Emma Goldman Imagines the Millenium


 Just Before the War Between the Plates
 I Can Handle That


 Talking  with Lee Blessing

...with Tom Coash
...with Mary Fengar Gail
...with Richard Kalinowsky
...with Jamie Pachino
...with David Rambo
...with Jason Sherman
...with Naomi Wallace
...with Tom Gibbons
...with Dick Goldberg

A conversation with Lee Blessing, with Larry Loebell, Literary Manager and Dramaturg and Christine Evans, Literary Intern

INTERACT: We'd like to start by talking a little about the background of GOING TO ST. IVES. The struggles between tribes in Africa, and the struggle to define and maintain nationhood, for that matter, has been going on all of your life. What historical moments remained with you over the years, and how did the real history influence the state of May's fictional country?

LEE BLESSING: I'm old enough to remember the great wave of independence that swept over Africa in the late '50's and '60's. There was an idealism in that period that seemed to harmonize with the Civil Rights movement here in America. And, inevitably perhaps, there was the subsequent evaporation of much of those early hopes and aspirations. Many of the new nation states (owing in large part to the policies of both the U.S. and the U.S.S.R.) devolved rather quickly into totalitarian regimes or cases of long-term famine and civil war. I remember Lumumba's assassination in the Congo, the war between Nigeria and its rebellious province Biafra, as well as the moment when "Emperor" Bokassa renamed the Central African Republic the Central African Empire. And of course I recall the grim example of Idi Amin's rule in Uganda. Current leaders like Robert Mugabe seem to continue the peremptory and often violent means employed by various strongmen in Africa and elsewhere in the developing world. There is of course always progress in the African political scene. Look at South Africa, for example. But there are always steps back as well as forward. No one wants colonialism back (certainly one of the most violent periods in Africa's history), but those who hoped for a sudden relief from the hideousness of that world have been disappointed. I doubt anyone in the early '60's could have conceived the massacres in Rwanda over thirty years later, for example.

INTERACT: The idea of nationalism - even tribalism - of belonging to a country, to a place, versus being in exile from it, is a significant aspect of GOING TO ST. IVES. Cora leaves England and then America, and May, while having received a British education, ties herself to her ancestral home in Africa. How do you feel about this kind of connection to place? For instance, as a New Yorker, did you feel differently after September 11, 2001?

LB: I've been a rambler much of my life, and especially in recent years. So 9/11 hit me differently I think than it did long-time New Yorkers. I personally don't have all that much allegiance to a sense of 'home' (not all that unusual for playwrights - Ibsen spent much of his creative life in Switzerland, and August Wilson writes about Pittsburgh but has chosen to live in St. Paul and then Seattle over the last twenty-five years). Issues of home and belonging are much more important to Cora and May - especially May. A number of actresses playing the role have emphasized what a profound threat they feel when Cora suggests that she'll bury May's body in England. It was very powerful. The lesson she's teaching Cora is that you have to find and define your life when and where you can. It's not always your choice.

INTERACT: Readers and audience members will undoubtedly draw parallels between May's son and Uganda's Idi Amin Dada. There's no one quite as singularly monstrous as Amin in power in Africa right now, and perhaps that is an indicator that things are better in some quarters, but it still seems hard to feel hopeful about many African nations. Are you?

LB: I'm very hopeful for sub-Saharan African nations. As I said, there's always progress amid the relative political chaos. It's really a matter of when the rest of the world will begin to give a damn what happens there. We put Europe back to rights in a single decade under the Marshall plan-Japan as well. We did that because we saw an economic benefit in doing so. Right now, no one sees a comparable benefit in giving massive aid to Africa. But I remain faithful that the time will come when we do. Political and economic systems improve when the rest of the world gets involved, not when it stands on the sidelines.

INTERACT: Maternal love and maternal resolve are in conflict in this play, both in the plot and in the souls of May and Cora. At what point in your writing process did you decide to make the doctor a woman? Can you talk a little about your creative process?

LB: In part this play was inspired by two actresses once saying to me, "You should write a play like A WALK IN THE WOODS for women." A few years later, I did. So it was always going to be two women, since A WALK IN THE WOODS is two men. But of course I discovered that two women often come to somewhat different issues and approaches than two men might. So the play quickly developed its own unique identity and theme.

INTERACT: There is a description of ethics that suggests that while morals are absolute, right versus wrong, ethics concerns the more complex considerations of the weight of two rights. Ethical questions haunt this play. Assistance in murder, the breaking of the Hippocratic Oath. Do you think it's possible to be engaged at this level of political enterprise and not be defeated by ethical conundrums?

LB: Two things can be right at the same time. It's right not to kill people, but it may also be right to stop May's son by whatever means possible. We want to live in an unconflicted way, but that doesn't mean we actually can. Life's far more challenging than that. Niels Bohr said "The opposite of a correct statement is an incorrect statement, but the opposite of a profound truth is often another profound truth."

INTERACT: GOING TO ST. IVES includes several characters who just skirt the scenes, waiting off-stage or interacting with Cora and May just before the scene begins. The audience can almost feel the service of Mrs. Lennox or the pressure from Mr. Onogu and Mr. Museri. Is the limitation in the number of characters a reflection of the "smaller is better" condition of American theater today, or is keeping them out of sight an aesthetic choice? Surely you can get plays with larger cast sizes produced. What impels you to keep a play so stunningly and tightly focused?

LB: Well, I've already spilled the secret of why it's a two-character play. Still, as fond as I've grown of Mrs. Lennox, Mr. Onogu and Mr. Museri I wouldn't want to see them onstage. Much of the pleasure and power they afford comes from the fact that they seem to hover so close yet never quite burst the bubble of intimacy and complicity Cora and May are building all through the play. Yet we know they will burst it. The play's style owes a little to the Greeks. All terrible acts are banished offstage-which makes them even more terrible in our imaginations. And it makes this temporary separation from them all the more dear.