Two years ago, Palm Beach County was under dire drought conditions, with a water supply estimated to last only 21 days. It was a desperate situation, but how do you create a play about it without it seeming like a, pardon the expression, dry discourse?
That is the challenge that Florida Stage has taken on with Cane, the opening play of its 24th season, a world premiere that is the first subscription show in its new home at the Kravis Center and, perhaps most significantly, the first play in the company’s ambitious Florida Cycle.
The brainchild of producing artistic director Lou Tyrrell, the cycle will be an effort to attract playwrights to write stories about the Sunshine State.
“Florida is so interesting in its eccentricities and its extremes,” says Tyrrell. “Here is a company whose name represents the state, making a cultural contribution to the state, and from the state to the country. Wouldn’t it be fun if years later we had 12 or 15 or 20 plays that told various Florida stories?”
He expects to commission scripts from major writers across the state, but for the inaugural play, Tyrrell turned to his staff playwright-in-residence, 29-year-old Andrew Rosendorf. Like the party guest in The Graduate who says to Benjamin Braddock, “Plastics,” Tyrrell gave Rosendorf the leadoff slot in the Florida Cycle with one word — “water.”
Rosendorf, who was born and raised in the Northern Virginia suburbs of Washington, D.C., not only began knowing little about water management, he had slim knowledge of Florida’s past.
“I didn’t know what story I wanted to tell and I didn’t know anything about South Florida history. Oh, my god, I had so much to learn,” says Rosendorf. “It was overwhelming and exhilarating at the same time.”
He began by reading everything he could get his hands on and interviewing water conservation experts. “I became a sponge, learning about the Everglades and about South Florida, its whole history and politics,” says Rosendorf. Gradually, he began focusing on the era of the deadly 1928 hurricane and the present day, a time when much of the region was swampland — that is, there was too much water — and 80 years later, when water was in short supply.
But Rosendorf knew he had to invent a human saga to attract and retain audience attention, rather than an issue play. So he created characters based on his reading, devising a story about a Belle Glade farmer worried about how to tame his land and survive a brutal hurricane. Then in the second act, Cane jumps ahead to current-day Florida and to the farmer’s descendants, who are battling the lack of water.
As Rosendorf puts it, Cane is “a tale of betrayal and bloodshed, water and wind, family and fortune.” The title Cane has multiple meanings. “One is hurricane, also sugar cane, and then there’s the biblical implications of Cain and Abel,” says Rosendorf.
When he began writing Cane eighteen months ago, Florida Stage was in its former cramped quarters in Manalapan, which would have meant a lot of compromises with the production.
“Certainly our switch to the Kravis was very freeing,” he concedes. “The set that Richard Crowell is building is massive and gorgeous. When Lou read the script, he quickly had the idea that maybe the dike had some height, when my initial thought to make sure it would be producible, was that the dike could well be the front of the stage.
“I’m very drawn to theatricality and there’s theatricality in this play, but I also had in mind that Florida Stage was asking me to write this, so I knew I had to keep a certain producibility aspect in mind as I was doing it.”
Not that he makes it easy, writing in a scene in which the 1928 hurricane blows through Belle Glade. How do you put a hurricane onstage?
“We’re going to have, as I understand it, some giant fans,” Rosendorf reports. “We had explored water as a possibility, but because of the short turnover time when the show is over, we ultimately went to lighting and sound effects. But certainly our actors will be muddied up and wet.”
The theatergoers at least will not have to worry about being caught in a deluge. “I think the idea is make sure that the audience feels that they are a little bit outside of it. They will not have to come with raincoats.”
As with any play it premieres, Florida Stage’s primary audience is at its theater, but it also hopes that the script will be produced elsewhere, to become part of theatrical literature. Does Cane have the universality to interest audiences beyond this state?
“I feel that if I’ve done my job right, I think it’s a very universal story of what was going on 80 years ago,” responds Rosendorf. “As I learned from my research, water shortage is a huge issue, not just in Florida, but around the country, especially with the Great Lakes and Lake Michigan. Experts believe that the next world war won’t be fought over oil but will be fought over water.
“We like to call Florida ‘the canary in the mineshaft.’ What happens here is a microcosm of what is happening elsewhere.”
CANE, Florida Stage at the Kravis Center, 701 Okeechobee Blvd., West Palm Beach. Opens Friday, Oct. 29, and runs through Sunday, Nov. 28. Tickets: $47-$50. Call: (561) 585-3433 or (800) 514-3837.