THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, November 3, 1994 TAG: 9411030087
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY KEITH MONROE, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 106 lines
EDWARD MORGAN IS pursuing a life in the theater - efficiently, almost methodically. One script at a time. His latest drama, ``Burning Azaleas,'' a topical play about an anti-war protest at Norfolk's Azalea Festival, and his ``sixth full-length, grown-up script,'' opens today at Old Dominion University.
``This was a situation where I was hired to write a play - whatever I wanted,'' says Morgan. ``And the university is a place for the exploration of powerful, relevant issues. I felt that having the opportunity to do whatever I wanted, I should really take a risk. I felt brave enough to address society.''
At 35, Morgan has been acting, directing and writing plays for more than a decade with growing skill and success. He's a thin, studious man with thinning hair and wire-rim glasses who teaches acting at ODU and Cape Henry Collegiate School. ``That's my day job,'' he says.
But his real interest is in writing and directing. To get a chance to do it, he is forced to bounce around the country - to Milwaukee and New Mexico, Florida and Chapel Hill. Several of his plays have been presented by the local Generic Theater.
``Either you're a nomad, you live and work in New York, or you get yourself connected to a theater or a college in a residential position. That's actually what I'm pursuing at this point.''
Morgan studied folklore at Dartmouth and then faced a choice between graduate school and an academic career or a gamble on the arts.``It felt like a real crossroads.'' In retrospect, maybe it wasn't really two roads that diverged.
He began writing and performing children's plays in schools. His folklore background has proved useful in shows called ``Appalachian Voices'' and ``Irish Reunion,'' in ``The Salmon'' about the collision of Christianity and paganism, a Christmas mummery called ``Every Fool's Feast'' and in ``The Last Ride of the Bold Calhouns,'' about an acting company in the Old West.
Morgan's conversation is peppered with references to Shakespeare, Yeats and morality plays, to O'Neill and the Greeks. Yet he's had to temper an intellectual's appreciation for fine theatrical writing with the need to put bodies in the seats. He's written three cabaret-style evenings to order for the Milwaukee Rep. They have helped him learn the craft by forcing him to conform to fairly rigid conventions.
But ``Burning Azaleas'' is something else, no longer apprentice work in a prescribed genre but an attempt at a big play on a big theme. It is set in the here and now of Hampton Roads, not long ago and far away. It brings into conflict 17-year-old Sara, who disrupts the Azalea festival with an anti-war protest, and her uncle and guardian, a career Navy man about to be promoted to rear admiral.
This could be a paint-by-numbers clash of good guys and bad guys, youthful idealism and weary realism, but Morgan makes it more than that. First, he plays fair by giving good lines to each side. And he shows that the conflict may ultimately be ``unresolvable,'' that the communications chasm that yawns between conventional wisdom and eternal truth may be unbridgeable. Could St. Francis and a duckhunter come to a meeting of the minds? Probably not.
The literary and theatrical sources of Morgans's earlier plays have been easily identified. What about this more ambitious effort that comes from closer to home in some senses? Morgan lists several wellsprings of inspiration.
``One of my grandfathers is a minister and the other grandfather was a rear admiral in the Navy, so I come by the conflict honestly,'' Morgan says. He also cites his fondness for Antigone, the story of a woman who defies the power of the state and pays the price. And he tells how he brainstormed with Chris Hanna, who is directing ``Burning Azaleas,'' when he first started thinking about the play.
``Chris and I had talked about this area as thinking of itself as having no culture, but actually having a lot of culture. I began to think about the military and the New Age culture and the tourism and the fundamentalism, all of those forces that are rubbing shoulders in this community. And some of those stuck.
``Then I had a friend who was involved in the peace movement who ended up at Daniel Berrigan's recent trial in North Carolina, being part of the group that disrupted that trial.'' Eventually, out of all those ingredients, Morgan created his drama about ``somebody who's really burning with a spiritual fire and answers to a higher passion.''
The play doesn't tell the audience what to think about this girl's protest. And Morgan himself is of two minds. ``I think Sara is crazy on some level, but on another level she's the sane one and the society is crazy.''
It is interesting that Morgan, who appears a model of lucidity and rationality, has chosen to write about an act that many will regard as irrational, and about a heroine who is motivated by spiritual rather than pragmatic concerns.
But when asked to name the contemporary playwrights he admires, Morgan lists Romulus Linney, Brian Friel, Athol Fugard and Caryl Churchill, ``a terrifically brave writer.'' And he offers the observation that ``a common stream through all these playwrights is that they're moral.'' Perhaps, despite its contemporary setting and conventional form, Morgan has written another morality play.
After ``Azaleas,'' he's on to more projects - directing ``Moon for the Misbegotten'' for the Milwaukee Repertory Theater and writing a cabaret piece with a detective theme for them, ``A Dame to Die For.'' He admits it is difficult finding time to essentially pursue two careers at once, as a director and as a playwright. But wearing two hats does have its upside.
Edward Morgan the playwright has been able to get all his scripts produced. ``It has been a great advantage to me as a writer that I know a director who will do my work.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color staff photo by Bill Tiernan
Edward Morgan, writer and director
by CNB