Matthews Playhouse is proud to open its 29th Season with the World Premiere of "One Year to Die"by Charles LaBorde September 20-29, 2024. This post was created using additional background materials provided by the playwright.
Hear Charles speak about the real life historical events that inspired the play in the Movie Pope Podcast:
The idea of this play came to me during a largely sleepless overnight flight to Rome. I knew one of the places I would visit during my trip to Italy was Sorrento, mere miles from where my Uncle Joe was engaged during the amphibious landing at Salerno, which marked the beginning of mainland efforts to liberate Italy from the grip of their former allies, Nazi Germany. His ship the USS Rowan was sunk on its return from Salerno to Oran in Northern Africa. It lies at the bottom of the Tyrrhenian Sea (a branch of the Mediterranean) about 25 miles due south of the Isle of Capri.
Before the trip I had done some research about my uncle, whom I had never known. (His death was almost exactly six years before I was born.) In the course of doing that research I learned a puzzling fact: although he was killed and listed as missing in action on September 11, 1943, his date of death on his death certificate from the Navy bears the date September 12, 1944.
That peculiarity got me to thinking about how my grandmother, Edwina LaBorde, would have passed that year in limbo—knowing her son was surely dead but possibly with a glimmer of hope since his body had not been recovered from the sea. The idea that I could explore her year came to me on that flight to Rome.
Many of the characters are real—Edwina, Oscar, Joe, and Hav (my father, Charles, Sr. whose life-long nickname in his family was Hav, short for Havage, which was the name of an old friend of my grandfather Oscar). Many of the incidents in the play are also taken from my family’s history, such as the death of Oscar during the war while all his sons were off fighting or working on the home front. Other characters and events are largely a product of my imagination. I have also simplified matters by giving my grandmother only two sons when she, in fact, had six sons and three daughters, all engaged in one way or another in the war effort. Joe was the only one who did not come home.
I have written this play as an attempt to connect with this man I have known through my father’s eyes and that picture on the wall I pass every morning as I stumble toward my morning coffee. And it is also my sincere effort to honor the indomitable spirit of my grandmother and the millions of other women who held this nation together on the home front during World War II.
A Note on Race and This Play
The color line between the races that was all-too-real in the South (and in truth, all across this country) during the Second World War continues to this day. I have tried to portray the most effective way I have known in my life to break down that barrier—through shared work and—in the case of this play—shared grief.
I have also tried to avoid the white writer’s cliché of the white people condescending to help or save the black characters. I have portrayed Ella as the driving force in the sewing of the quilt. It is her idea, and she extends the invitation to her fellow grieving mother, Edwina, to enlist her help with her project. Both share the burden of crossing the color line. The white woman is not taking a greater risk than her black counterpart in defying local norms. Neither woman is greeted amicably by the other’s neighbors or fellow churchgoers.
It has not been my goal to show the noble white family at the expense of the black family, but to portray two women equally dedicated to the memory of their sons and equally enduring the displeasure of their friends. I personally have learned a lot from these characters as I fleshed them out on paper and on the stage.
The Real Life Setting of One Year to Die
Hessmer is a real village in central Louisiana in Avoyelles Parish—less than one square mile in size. It was not incorporated until 1955. Today it has a population of less than 800, but at the time of the play would have been a mere fraction of that number. Currently it is the 11,453rd largest town in America.
It was really just a collection of small farms without any commercial center. Business was left to the nearby larger towns of Bunkie and Marksville. That’s where the locals went to buy groceries and hardware, where they took matters to court, where they bought gas, if they had survived enough during the Great Depression to own a car.
The only social gathering places in the village were the one Baptist and one Catholic churches—both rigidly segregated into African-American and Cajun congregations. I have vivid memories of attending church in the old Catholic church with its small balcony supported by surprisingly thin columns from the bottom floor. It seemed that every time I went to mass there, I got the “obstructed view” seat behind the column. There was no air conditioning, as was the same in my grandmother Edwina’s home. It was hot, humid. The days were impossibly uncomfortable, but the nights were covered by a ceiling of millions of stars shining brightly in a way we never see today, no matter how remote an area we might be watching from.
It was a simpler time—radio instead of tv, iceboxes instead of refrigerators, fans instead of central air, homecooked meals made by the master chef that was my grandmother instead of McDonalds (sorry, Bojangles, my Cajun grandmother would not have dreamed of frying a chicken), and most disappointingly an outhouse instead of indoor plumbing. If you were fortunate enough to have a phone, you shared a party line, which brought endless fun to us city folk in eavesdropping on neighbors’ conversations and quickly hanging up when we got caught.
This was the world of “One Year to Die”—the world that Joe, Lonnie, and Hav left abruptly to fight the war against the Nazis.
U.S.S. Rowan (DD-405)
The U.S.S. Rowan, a US Navy destroyer, plays a significant role in “One Year to Die.” She was laid down (they laid the keel to start construction) in 1937 and was commissioned in September, 1939. Her journey would end less than five years later on September 11, 1943, in the Tyrrhenian Sea off the Amalfi Coast of Italy. The ship was 340 feet long and 35 feet wide at the beam. She had a complement of about 275 officers and sailors.
Her foes that day were German E-boats—a British inclusive term for “enemy” boats that were essentially fast-attack boats. These ships were about one-third the size of the Rowan, but they were swift and carried a deadly complement of torpedoes.
Glossary of Cajun and Regional Terms
Basa ma goula (bah-suh mah goo-lah): kiss my a** (a highly bastardized version from French/Italian/Spanish)
Bayou (buy-you): a muddy creek
Bien sur (bya(n) soo-er): yes; surely
Blackstrap: a type of thick, dark molasses
Cher or chere (sha or share): dear one; sweetheart
Couillon (coo-yon): fool; crazy person (putting it politely)
Fite putainte (feet poo-tahnt): son of a bi*** (bastardized from fils de putain)
Grocery bill: grocery list
Je m’en fou (zhuh moa(n) foo): Literally “I don’t give a f***.”
Lagniappe (lan-yap): a little something extra
Laissez les bon temps rouler (lay-say lay boh(n) tah(n) roo-lay): let the good times roll.
Pirogue (pee-row): a Cajun dugout canoe
Rice drier: a large farm building where rice is processed
Rougarouin’ (roo-gah-ruin): act crazy like a werewolf or a mad dog; to get into trouble or to cause trouble.
SOS—Not the distress call, but a military dish—creamed chipped beef served on toast. It stands for “sh*t on shingles.”
Veillerin’ (vay-yay uh ree-in): spend the evening talking with friends.
Read BWW Q&A: Charles LaBorde on ONE YEAR TO DIE at Matthews Playhouse of the Performing Arts to learn more about the story behind One Year to Die.
Charles LaBorde: Playwright
Charles LaBorde has been an actor, director, designer, and playwright, as well as an arts educator and administrator throughout his lifetime. He holds a Ph.D. from The Ohio State University in theatre and doctoral certification in educational administration from the University of North Carolina. He was the founder of the high school at Northwest School of the Arts in Charlotte, where he served as principal for 15 years until his retirement in 2008.
He has received 11 regional and state directing awards, a national directing award from the National Youth Theatre, and numerous awards for scenic, costume, lighting, and sound design from the North Carolina Theatre Conference (NCTC). As a playwright he has received two national and four regional playwriting awards and has had his play, Memorial, performed in New York, across the nation, and in Europe. That play remains in print forty years after its initial production.
His most recent plays are the multiple award-winning Protective Custody Prisoner 34042 and Unbound. In 2010 he was named both Best Actor in a Drama and Theatre Person of the Year by Creative Loafing and was awarded the Marian Smith Lifetime Career Achievement Award by NCTC. He was also honored by having the black box theatre at Northwest School of the Arts renamed the Charles LaBorde Theatre.
He is a full member of The Dramatists Guild, Inc.—the professional trade association for theatre writers: playwrights, composers, lyricists, and librettists.
Other Plays By Charles LaBorde
Memorial - A Theatrical Oral History of Americans in Vietnam
Courage: - A Drama Based on Stephen Crane’s “The Red Badge of Courage”
Holocaust Duet and Testament -A Two-play Variation
Affinity -A Play of Frank Lloyd Wright and Taliesin
Protective Custody Prisoner 34042 - An Adaptation of the Memoir by Dr. Susan Cernyak-Spatz
Unbound - A Play about the Outer Banks and the Birth of Flight
All are available in paperback and as e-books on Amazon.com. Protective Custody is also available in a hardcover memorial edition.
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