World premiere of Home Again, a new play about Thomas Wolfe by William Gregg and Perry Deane Young
HOME AGAIN
The Southern Appalachian Repertory Theatre is proud to announce the world premiere of the play, Home Again, by SART director William Gregg and author Perry Deane Young. The new play premieres July 29-August 9 at the historic Owen Theater at Mars Hill College in Mars Hill, near Asheville, N.C. It tells the story of what happened when the author of You Can’t Go Home Again went home again. It is based not on Thomas Wolfe’s fiction but on the personal drama of his life.
In fact, the author Thomas Wolfe returned to his native Asheville, N.C., in September 1929 just days before his locally-explosive novel, Look Homeward, Angel, was published in New York. He would visit all those who later felt he had betrayed and ridiculed them in his widely praised novel. And then he went back to New York City and never returned to his beloved home town and the people there until eight years had passed. A wildly passionate man, Wolfe was caught in a web of loyalties that first involved his devotion to his art. Next was his love of the great stage designer, Aline Bernstein And always hovering in his memory was his devoted but needy family back in Asheville.
When the school teacher who had molded him as an intellectual and a writer read what Wolfe had written about her husband, she wrote him: “You have devastated your own family but you have crucified mine.” His sister was shunned by the literary club she was desperate to belong to. His older brother threatened to sue because Wolfe said he had a piece of “tough suet” where his heart ought to be.
But the publication of Look Homeward, Angel coincided almost to the day with the stock market crash in 1929 and Wolfe’s family like everybody else in Asheville was truly devastated. Ironically, the success of the hated novel enabled Wolfe to lend his family money when they needed it most.
When Wolfe actually came home again in 1937, he stopped off in his mother’s ancestral homeland of mountain-bound Yancey County. He got off the bus and walked into a gunfight among some distant cousins. But, his welcome home in nearby Asheville was tumultuous. All the bad feelings had been forgotten and he was greeted like a returning sports hero. The peace and quiet he sought in a little cabin out from Asheville evaded him as hordes of visitors invaded his privacy to tell him their stories and party with the famous author.
Wolfe fled back to the haven New York City had always offered him and plunged himself into his work, writing nearly 2 million words in less than a year. Leaving a mountainous manuscript with his publisher, he headed west on an extended vacation trip. From Seattle, Wolfe wired his family that he was hospitalized with a mysterious illness which was later diagnosed as tuberculosis of the brain. His family as always came to his aid, first his sister and then his brother and then his mother helped get him back to Baltimore for treatment at Johns Hopkins Hospital.
The famous author died there, surrounded by his devoted family. They brought him home to a celebrity’s farewell funeral. He was laid to rest in Riverside Cemetery among all those who once felt he betrayed them—and all their tombstones would eventually carry inscriptions from his writing. He was home again, home at last.
William Gregg and Perry Deane Young both grew up in Wolfe’s literary shadow in the Asheville suburb of Woodfin. This is their third play. SART previously produced their plays, Frankie, and Mountain of Hope. Prior to coming home to Mars Hill, Gregg served as director of the New American Theater in Illinois, the Theatre Virginia in Richmond, the New Raft Theatre Company in New York City and the Alabama Shakespeare Festival. At the Tyrone Guthrie Theatre in Minneapolis, he worked as production stage manager and assistant director for artistic director Liviu Ciulei. In addition to the three plays, Young is the author of 10 books and one screenplay. A new edition of his Vietnam memoir, Two of the Missing, has just been published by Press 53. Millenium Films has announced that production of the film based on the book will begin in 2009.
HOME AGAIN
The Southern Appalachian Repertory Theatre is proud to announce the world premiere of the play, Home Again, by SART director William Gregg and author Perry Deane Young. The new play premieres July 29-August 9 at the historic Owen Theater at Mars Hill College in Mars Hill, near Asheville, N.C. It tells the story of what happened when the author of You Can’t Go Home Again went home again. It is based not on Thomas Wolfe’s fiction but on the personal drama of his life.
In fact, the author Thomas Wolfe returned to his native Asheville, N.C., in September 1929 just days before his locally-explosive novel, Look Homeward, Angel, was published in New York. He would visit all those who later felt he had betrayed and ridiculed them in his widely praised novel. And then he went back to New York City and never returned to his beloved home town and the people there until eight years had passed. A wildly passionate man, Wolfe was caught in a web of loyalties that first involved his devotion to his art. Next was his love of the great stage designer, Aline Bernstein And always hovering in his memory was his devoted but needy family back in Asheville.
When the school teacher who had molded him as an intellectual and a writer read what Wolfe had written about her husband, she wrote him: “You have devastated your own family but you have crucified mine.” His sister was shunned by the literary club she was desperate to belong to. His older brother threatened to sue because Wolfe said he had a piece of “tough suet” where his heart ought to be.
But the publication of Look Homeward, Angel coincided almost to the day with the stock market crash in 1929 and Wolfe’s family like everybody else in Asheville was truly devastated. Ironically, the success of the hated novel enabled Wolfe to lend his family money when they needed it most.
When Wolfe actually came home again in 1937, he stopped off in his mother’s ancestral homeland of mountain-bound Yancey County. He got off the bus and walked into a gunfight among some distant cousins. But, his welcome home in nearby Asheville was tumultuous. All the bad feelings had been forgotten and he was greeted like a returning sports hero. The peace and quiet he sought in a little cabin out from Asheville evaded him as hordes of visitors invaded his privacy to tell him their stories and party with the famous author.
Wolfe fled back to the haven New York City had always offered him and plunged himself into his work, writing nearly 2 million words in less than a year. Leaving a mountainous manuscript with his publisher, he headed west on an extended vacation trip. From Seattle, Wolfe wired his family that he was hospitalized with a mysterious illness which was later diagnosed as tuberculosis of the brain. His family as always came to his aid, first his sister and then his brother and then his mother helped get him back to Baltimore for treatment at Johns Hopkins Hospital.
The famous author died there, surrounded by his devoted family. They brought him home to a celebrity’s farewell funeral. He was laid to rest in Riverside Cemetery among all those who once felt he betrayed them—and all their tombstones would eventually carry inscriptions from his writing. He was home again, home at last.
William Gregg and Perry Deane Young both grew up in Wolfe’s literary shadow in the Asheville suburb of Woodfin. This is their third play. SART previously produced their plays, Frankie, and Mountain of Hope. Prior to coming home to Mars Hill, Gregg served as director of the New American Theater in Illinois, the Theatre Virginia in Richmond, the New Raft Theatre Company in New York City and the Alabama Shakespeare Festival. At the Tyrone Guthrie Theatre in Minneapolis, he worked as production stage manager and assistant director for artistic director Liviu Ciulei. In addition to the three plays, Young is the author of 10 books and one screenplay. A new edition of his Vietnam memoir, Two of the Missing, has just been published by Press 53. Millenium Films has announced that production of the film based on the book will begin in 2009.
posted by Perry Deane Young at 6:26 AM
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