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THE GENIUS OF RACHEL CARSON
A SENSE OF WONDER: A PLAY BASED ON THE LIFE AND WORKS OF RACHEL CARSON
Written and performed by Kaiulani Lee at Bates College Chapel in Lewiston,
Maine, on October 23, 2003
Reviewed by Barbara Tatham Johnson
Rachel Carson reaches down gingerly for two small paperback books on the
carpet beside her desk. She is weak from the effect of cancer treatments. I
am sure the books are copies of two of her titles, The Sea Around Us
and The Edge of the Sea. For an instant, I regret I did not think
ahead to bring my own copies for her to autograph.
My mental lapse startles me, for I watch not Rachel Carson but a talented
actress, Kaiulani Lee, portraying Ms. Carson in a two act play staged in the
chancel of the Bates College Chapel as part of the ongoing celebration of
the twenty-fifth anniversary of the establishment of the Bates-Morse
Mountain Conservation Area in Phippsburg, Maine.
I had carefully noted the set details when I took my seat on the center
aisle, first pew. A desk and chair occupy stage front. The desktop is
cluttered with folders and papers. A pointed gray rock, veined with white
and acting as a paperweight, resembles a fish’s dorsal fin where it juts
atop the clutter. Farther back a small table holds a stack of books and
crushed newspaper for packing fragile items. A few folded cardboard boxes
lean against one of the table’s legs. Two pictures in frames, a pot filled
with gull and other seabird flight feathers sit atop a bookcase nearby. A
subtly colored oriental carpet on the chancel floor defines the perimeters
of a room.
The play based on the writing, diaries, and letters of Rachel Carson and
performed across North America and Europe in every kind of hall and venue,
settles comfortably into this evening’s setting in the chapel. Ms. Lee enters
the brightly-lit set from the choir stalls, stage right, dressed in plain
blouse, skirt, sweater, and low pumps. Her hair, curled close to her head,
suggests the look of Rachel Carson’s curls. She explains that the play’s
first act takes place in September 1963 as Ms. Carson prepares to leave her
Maine shore cottage to return to her home in Silver Spring, Maryland. Rachel
Carson is in the terminal stage of cancer and concerned for the future care
of her dear adopted eleven-year-old great-nephew Roger. He is her delight
and inspiration for The Sense of Wonder, her guide for young and old
searching for the elemental and wondrous experiences in the natural world. A
driver will come to collect them and their belongings at 7:00 the next
morning, and there is much to do. The sense of unfinished business and the
limits of time in which to do it are brilliantly established as the play
begins.
Kaiulani Lee becomes the thoughtful, witty, generous, and deeply courageous
Rachel Carson for the next hour. While seated at the desk, facing the
audience, her ankles demurely crossed, moving about slowly preparing to
pack, or vainly trying to call Roger from play on the rocky shore, Rachel
Carson shares her inspirations and fears with the audience.
The play begins with Rachel composing a letter to her dear friend and
neighbor, Dorothy Freeman. This letter contains the essence, clear-eyed yet
poetic, of Carson’s inspired interpretations of life’s wonders and is the
finest way to start the presentation of her life.
This is a postscript to our morning at Newagen...For me it was one of the
loveliest of the summer’s hours, and all the details will remain in my
memory: that blue September sky, the sounds of the wind in the
spruces...most of all I shall remember the Monarchs, that unhurried westward
drift of one small winged form after another, each drawn by some invisible
force. We talked a little about their migration, their life history. Did
they return? We thought not; for most, at least, this was the closing
journey of their lives.
But it occurred to me this afternoon, remembering, that it had been a happy
spectacle, that we had felt no sadness when we spoke of the fact that there
would be no return. And rightly— for when any living thing has come to the
end of its cycle we accept that as natural.
For the Monarch, that cycle is measured in a known span of months. For
ourselves, the measure is something else, the span of which we cannot know.
But the thought is the same: when that intangible cycle has run its course
it is a natural and not unhappy thing that a life comes to its end.
That is what those brightly fluttering bits of life taught me this morning.
I found a deep happiness in it—so, I hope, may you.
As act one continues, the audience becomes the confidant of Rachel Carson’s
motivations. Her deep love and appreciation of her mother’s life-long
encouragement and her delight in young Roger’s enthusiasms are the sources
of her insights and integrity. The audience never doubts her dedication and
resolve as we learn how fiercely she is besieged by the chemical industry,
government agencies, and the media. When she shares a quotation by Lincoln
that gave her
encouragement, “To sin by silence when they should protest makes cowards of
men,” the audience feels the depth of commitment to her efforts to keep
Silent Spring on track. The quotation stirred the audience.
Ms. Lee’s performance in act two, set in Rachel Carson’s home in Silver
Spring, focuses on the last months of her life. The publication of Silent
Spring had unleashed a crescendo of industry and government invective and
ridicule. Weakened by disease but buoyed by firm resolve and a wonderful
sense of humor (she kept a list of derisive and dismissive quotations about
her under the heading “Carsonisms”), Rachel Carson continued to speak and
write of her own and others’ scientific proofs of the horrific harm
unregulated chemical use had on the environment and human health. As the
play concludes, Rachel Carson continues to write at her desk to the last.
Paul Brooks, Carson’s editor at Houghton Mifflin Company and her biographer,
wrote, “ as a writer she used words to reveal the poetry—which is to say
the essential truth and meaning—at the core of any scientific fact. She
sought the knowledge that is essential to appreciate the extent of the
unknown.”
I recognize that the positive changes Rachel Carson’s work brought are
threatened and endangered today. This play revitalized my commitment to
speak out for a safe environment.
The audience, residents of Phippsburg who came by bus, students, and members
of the community attended a brilliant presentation of Rachel Carson’s
essence this evening.
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