Playwright Candace Corrigan in period costume has penned Rutherford County's tale. TMP photo provided
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Rutherford County is no stranger to history.
And neither is playwright Candace Corrigan.
Corrigan, who wrote a new play for the “Get to Know Rutherford County” celebration next weekend, has long been fascinated by history.
In the mid-1990s, Corrigan began her journey into the past with Sampler of Michigan Pioneer Women for Michigan Public Radio. The four-part production focusing on 12 women from history won three national awards and started Corrigan on her trip through the past.
Since then the Murfreesboro resident has produced many more public radio and public television programs on women in history.
And now she’s tried her hand with Rutherford County’s history.
“What’s so astonishing is that the Murfreesboro story is so American and so many people came through here on their way west,” she said.
Corrigan translated Murfreesboro’s and the county’s “American story” into a new play, “A Historical Review of Rutherford County.”
She described the play as a series of monologues interspersed with her original songs, which trace the county’s history from the American Revolution to today.
“Imagine that a number of people who once lived here came to life and had a chance to tell you something,” explained Denise Carlton, Get to Know Rutherford County event coordinator. “We are only showing a few of these of the many, many people in the county that we have first person information on, but this is the beginning.”
But the play is not entirely Corrigan’s own, she said. Parts come from earlier works, like "It Could Not Be Well Avoided,” which is a play in two acts that features eight residents of and visitors to Murfreesboro and is occasionally performed at Stones River National Battlefield.
Actors will portray significant characters from Rutherford County history on the steps of the Historic Courthouse at 1, 2 and 3 p.m. Saturday.
“I have been fairly charmed by the characters I’ve met at the library and I don’t mean the living ones,” Corrigan said about the research that went into writing the play.
The charming characters will be introduced by a “mayor-type” who narrates the piece, she said.
“Tony Cimino from the Center for the Arts will introduce people and ask them questions,” Corrigan said. “He’s a timeless mayor who’s seen all this come and go.”
Actors will portray everyone from explorer Uriah Stone, who the Stones River is named for, to Black Fox, the Native American chief. Corrigan even found an actual speech given by Black Fox in the late 1700s to use in the play.
“Peter Jennings, who was a free black man and fought directly under George Washington, is also highlighted in the play,” Carlton said. “He was a baker downtown and often entertained the young boys in his shop with stories of the Revolutionary War.”
As for the music, Corrigan used poems, diaries and journals from the time for the lyrics, from John Spence’s journals to poems about the railroad and Dixie Highway.
“Woven through this presentation are songs written like, sung and played like the time period,” Carlton said. “One of the songs that she wrote was taken from a poem by Eliza Jenkins Murphy, the granddaughter of the earliest settler in 1790 of the Jenkins who built Marymont on Rucker Lane.”
The song is written like an Irish folksong, she added.
“When I write a song from something, I try to imagine what they would say and write that,” Corrigan said, adding even the music is inspired by the era.
One of the diaries Corrigan used was by Virginia French, a McMinnville woman who recorded the Civil War on the pages of her diary.
“The most moving part was when her neighbor was killed in the Battle of Stones River,” Corrigan said. “She wrote that ‘the artillery was tremendous. It was so loud we could hardly hear ourselves singing over his grave’.”
Words like those first inspired Corrigan to write about history.
“The first thing I ever wrote like this was from a woman’s diary whose husband was here during the war,” she said.
Michelle Willard can be contacted at 615-869-0816 or mwillard@murfreesboropost.com. |
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