“A stirring celebration of humanity.”
-LA Weekly
All photos from the White River Theatre Festival production
Journal of the Plague Year
adapted from Daniel Defoe’s novel by Stephen Legawiec
Full-length One Act • 85 minutes / 1 Male* / 1 Female
JOURNAL OF THE PLAGUE YEAR is a full-length, one-actor* play. It is based on the Daniel Defoe’s historical novel about the great plague of 1665 in which a third of London’s population was wiped out – and of one courageous man who lived to tell the tale. Through the eyes of a London saddler, who chooses to stay in the city while thousands fled, the audience meets the full range of humanity as it deals with a profound event: Thieves, angels, cowards and heroes, a cross section of London is laid bare and comes to vivid life in this extraordinary story of courage, humanity and hope. The show is, above all, about the necessity and sanctity of human contact.
*Although it is performed by one actor for the majority of its 85-minute running time, a girl appears only in the final two minutes of the play. The principal role can be played be an actor of any gender or ethnicity.
Journal of the Plague Year was written and first produced at the White River Theatre Festival in Vermont in 1990 at the height of the AIDS epidemic, with Russell Leib as the Saddler. It was subsequently produced in 2004 in Los Angeles by Ziggurat Theatre Ensemble.
Please send an inquiry HERE.
“Defoe’s account could be a frigid read; Stephen Legawiec adapts it to the stage, bringing characters to vibrant life, adding hearty interactions, and making of it a universal, timeless, and surprisingly humor-tinged tale of our interconnectedness. Let us hope we don’t soon forget the meaning and joy of a simple handshake.”
“It takes an unflinching and unromanticized look at the best and worst of human nature and finds a measure of hope.”
Excerpts from the Valley News review of the White River Theatre Festival production, 3/3/90
Legawiec’s sensitive adaptation, Russell Leib’s stunning one-man performance and Steven Leon’s evocative lighting come together as an emotionally searing event in which life at its absolute worst serves as a metaphor for life at its conceivable best.
Legawiec has taken liberties with Defoe’s 1722 work. But this is just fine, since Defoe himself was using the then-new novelistic form to write about the plague that killed 100,000 Londoners almost 60 years before, and thus was taking some liberties of his own.
What Defoe did, using a variety of historical sources, was to chronicle the impact on London of the introduction of the plague from Holland in 1665 by creating a narrator in the form of the saddler. What Legawiec has done is to take Defoe’s dry, matter-of-fact chronicle and give it flesh and bones, sinew, heart and spleen.
To the extent that Legawiec has strayed from Defoe’s presentation, he has done so gently and in ways that make sense. The mayor and alderman’s orders of July 1 – in which methods were established for the total quarantine of afflicted houses have been quoted almost verbatim.
But after these have been read, the saddler turns to the audiences and asks, “Can you put it all together? The plague not only makes us victims, but at the same time makes us murderers. The morality of such a notion is incomprehensible to the likes of me.”
Daniel Defoe did not put these words or anything like them in the mouth of his narrator. He should have.
Go see this play. Prepare to come away shattered – and resurrected.