 Media Credit: Ryan Joyce In a scene from 'Graceland,' Rootie (Molly Murphy, A&S '09) speaks to how makeup hides.
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This weekend, the Contemporary Theater presented An Evening of One Acts, which included two plays - Graceland and Asleep on the Wind - both by playwright Ellon Byron.
In Graceland, Byron takes her audience to June 4, 1982 - three days before Elvis Presley's mansion of the same name is set to be opened to the public. Early in the morning, Bev (Grace Jacobson, A&S '10) arrives to the front gate and lays out her sleeping bag to claim stake as the first in line to enter Presley's mansion. Shortly thereafter, Rootie (Molly Murphy, A&S '09) comes, putting down her pillow and brown paper bag. When Bev returns with her lawn chair and cooler filled with sweet treats, Rootie informs her that she, in fact, has arrived first, because she was the first to sit down. From there on out, the two argue over who has the right to enter Graceland first. Bev is Elvis's biggest fan, while Rootie hopes to find a reminiscence of her brother Beau's soul, who is now dead. They take turns sitting in front of each other, debating over who knows more about Elvis, and even discussing whose relatives look more like him.
Bev describes Rootie as "one of those kids they find in the woods after 10 years." Rootie refuses Bev's candy, revealing that her husband does not allow her to eat it because he likes her to stay as thin as the opening of a door; her name is even skinny to match. She is fascinated by Brigadoon, talks like a Southern belle, and she wears cakes of makeup, because "once you take it off, you're not a princess anymore." This dependence on others to make her happy as well as the paper bag comes to foreshadow the lifestyle that she has come to live.
Bev is composed, but both are submissive women. She avoids her "woman itches," even when her husband is gone for three to four weeks at a time on the road. They turn out to be united through their love for Elvis, which carries them through life. The two women realize soon enough that they have more in common than what they think, and on an incredible theatrical journey, they grow together.
In the second one act, Asleep on the Wind, the viewer is taken back 10 years earlier to the secret place that Bev speaks of in Graceland, to the moment where her brother Beau (Seth Byrum, A&S '11) reveals it to her. Alone in a forest in Louisiana, Beau reveals to his little sister that he is leaving to go to Baton Rouge to join the army. He says, "I'll be just like daddy and drink myself to sleep every night." The audience learns how Rootie became obsessed with Beau, who instructs her that, "There ain't nothing better than him," placing her in charge of his Elvis records. Beau is the model example for how familial relationships should be. He is the father that she never had, urging her to stay and school and make something of herself to, so that both can find their American dreams. In Rootie, the audience sees innocence lost. As a child, she cannot cope with losing her brother, telling him that she hates him.
2008 Woodie Awards
