Scotland Road
by Jeffrey Hatcher

January 8-30, 1999
Directed by Rhonda Clark

It's the 1990's - a woman is rescued from the North Atlantic wearing 1900's clothing and she will only say one word: Titanic. No one can believe her story but by the play's end, everyone's identity will be in question. Mystery continues on the high seas in this chilling drama by the author of last season's hit Three Viewings.

Prepare to listen in as playwright Hatcher probes the reasons for the long-running contemporary obsession with the disaster, and seems to play with notions of reincarnation and karmic debt. What, something else about the Titanic? In Jeffrey Hatcher's words: "It's not about the Titanic...it's about the ice."

FROM THE PLAYWRIGHT

The idea for the play came about during an automobile trip from Colorado to Minnesota in August of 1991. Stopping one evening in South Dakota, I started to read to read a biography of William Godwin. Godwin was one of the most influential writers of the early 19th century. In 1826, a news item out of Switzerland caught his eye. The frozen body of a man had been recovered in the Alps. When defrosted, he revived and explained that he was an Englishman who had been caught in an avalanche in 1660. Godwin made frantic attempts to reach Switzerland, in hopes of being able to arrange a personal interview with the 200-year-old iceman. Of course, it was a hoax, but Godwin -- rational, Age of Enlightenment, non-believer William Godwin -- believed in it.

The next day, as we drove through the Badlands of South Dakota, I stopped at a 7-11 to fill our gas tank. As I was paying at the counter, I looked down at a rack of tabloids and saw a headline on the cover of The Weekly World News, which read "Titanic Survivor Found on Iceberg." The paper told the story of a woman who had been found floating on an iceberg in the North Atlantic.

There are times when you go searching for a play idea. But on rare occasions, an idea will come galloping towards you unbidden, leaping at you like a wet yellow Lab, knocking you to the ground and licking your face until you begin to type. SCOTLAND ROAD came to me that way. Within a few days, I had my own interior "pitch": A mysterious woman with a secret. A rational man desperate to believe. A locked room. Some twists, some turns. An iceberg. The Titanic. [Since its first production at Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park, SCOTLAND ROAD has] become my most produced play, with stagings as far away as Santiago and Berlin.

Whatever the film, book, or play (about the Titanic), the story has always been about the sinking. It's never about how we think about the sinking; why the Titanic has become an obsession. What draws a person into an obsessive web? What's so missing in a person's life that it can only be found in nostalgia for a disaster they never knew? As far as obsession goes, I'm just in the crowd watching from the dock; true believers are on board.

SPECIAL THANKS TO:
NCS Medical Equipment - Mathis Brothers Furniture - Cort Furniture Rental - Jon Womastek - Doobie Potter - Marcellus Hankins - Terry Veal - Vikki Simer - Robert Erwin - Randy Gouge

Produced by special arrangement with Dramatists Play Service, Inc.