ASF 2015 Study Materials for by Alfred Uhry
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ASF 2015 Study Materials for Welcome to 1947 1972 1876 Driving Miss Daisy by Alfred Uhry Director John Manfredi Study Materials written by Susan Willis Set Design John Manfredi ASF Dramaturg Costume Design Elizabeth Novak [email protected] Lighting Design Tom Rodman Contact ASF: 1.800.841-4273, www.asf.net ASF/ 1 Driving Miss Daisy by Alfred Uhry Welcome—Let's Take A Drive Together Alfred Uhry is almost as good a chauffeur as Hoke Coleburn. He transports us not only through the span of 25 years in the lives of three characters but also through the transformation of an entire era in the South. He negotiates Characters these changes with smooth, effortless turns, with Daisy Werthan, a widow aged pungent, realistic dialogue, and with detailed 72 to 97 during play character development. To be subject to Uhry’s Boolie Werthan, her son, aged dramatic drive is pure pleasure. 40 to 65 during play Driving Miss Daisy is a memory play, almost Hoke Coleburn, Miss Daisy's a scrapbook of moments. In it Uhry depicts a chauffeur, aged 60 to 85 world he knows well, the world of Atlanta and during play the Reform Jewish community he grew up in, Uhry on the Play and the South the world that shaped him and which he has “I thought somebody should tell what the Setting: Atlanta, Georgia, evoked in shaping this play. Uhry not only creates South was really like,” Alfred Uhry claims as he between 1948 and 1973, memorable onstage characters, but intriguing describes his impetus for writing the play: and on Alabama highways offstage characters as well, for who does not I was tired of all these stereotypes—that white to Mobile enjoy imagining Boolie’s wife Florine or Idella people were running around being openly with her fabled coffee? hostile and rude toward black people, and The strength of Uhry's story, as he realizes, that black people were standing there with is what he calls its truth. His story looks simple, hat in hand saying, ‘Yassir, boss,’ or else but to achieve depth and portray a sense of being firebrand revolutionaries. None of that community with so few characters is far from was true in our case. What’s interesting is About These Study Materials easy. Daisy does not want a chauffeur, but that all those feelings were there under the The study guide offers an she needs one, so her son Boolie hires Hoke. surface, but what was really important was array of options for teaching The process of acceptance—where Daisy is good manners on both sides. Being rude is overview or details and for "transported"—is slow, and the relationship has frowned upon in the South; it’s not so much comparing the play to issues and to be negotiated more than once in delicate what you do as how you do it. ideas in your curriculum: social exchanges of white and black, man The situation and characters are drawn 1) information about the and woman, Jew and Christian, “boss” and from Uhry’s own memories. Miss Daisy draws author, Alfred Uhry employee, elderly and caregiver, and finally from Uhry’s grandmother and the chauffeur from 2) public events in the play, friend to friend. Their friendship may take her driver, Will Coleman, who did indeed begin with primary documents, a decades to acknowledge, but it is strong, true, driving for her when she was 72 and continued timeline, and general and unmistakable. It manifests the best of each doing so for the next 25 years. At the Atlanta character perspectives character and suggests the possibility that what premiere of the play, Uhry’s family and Will 3) a discussion of the play's we share can be just as important as what Coleman’s descendants were all present. Uhry structure appears to divide us, just as it can lead us to recalls that “after the play, a young Coleman 4) the dynamics of Hoke's relish and appreciate our particularities. relative asks his grandmother which side of the world—the African American family I’m on.… I find tears in my eyes.” experience The situation was deeply rooted not only in 5) the dynamics of Daisy's Daisy: Where are you going? … place but in time, for who the characters are is world—the Jewish American to a large part derived from when they live. As experience I want to go the way I always go.… This is wrong.… I've been the respect and affection between them grows, 6) the process of assimilation part of the tension of the play is that it cannot driving to the Piggly Wiggly since 7) activity ideas (discussion/ be expressed. As Uhry observes, writing ) the day they put it up.… This isn't the way! Go back! Go back It [that emotional response] would never have happened. My grandmother was not huggy; this minute! she stood very erect, she was very smart Hoke: Yonder the Piggly Wiggly. and she had very high standards. Sentiment Quotations from New York Times Daisy: Get ready to turn now. was never going to get in her way. When I articles related to the Broadway was a little boy and wrote her letters, she production, December 23, 1987; would send them back to me—corrected. In icon from a modern chauffeur service that environment, it was just not good form to express your feelings. ASF/ 2 Driving Miss Daisy by Alfred Uhry About the Author: Alfred Uhry Alfred Uhry is best known for his 1987 In thinking about his subject, Uhry Pulitzer Prize-winning play Driving Miss Daisy, comments, which in 1989 was made into a popular, Academy Everyone thinks Jews are all the same, but Award-winning film starring Jessica Tandy and we didn’t think so in the South. People were Morgan Freeman, for which he also won the uncomfortable with being Jewish there. The Oscar for screenplay adaptation. In 1996 Uhry way I was brought up, the best thing to be was commissioned by the Atlanta Cultural was Episcopalian. In our temple the music Olympiad to write a play for the Alliance Theatre, was Christmas hymns. I was brought up with and he continued his exploration of the Christmas trees, Easter egg hunts—and my Jewish community in his native Atlanta with Jewish face. The Last Night of Ballyhoo, a play about the Uhry’s own life is a testament to the issues he 1930s and Southern Jews’ attitudes toward raises in his plays. Only later in life did he begin “the other kind,” that is, observant Jews to have a seder at Passover: newer to the U.S. I went to Israel in 1992, which really woke up Uhry grew up in Atlanta’s thriving in me that it was nothing to be ashamed of. German-Jewish community and graduated It’s embarrassing to admit you’re ashamed from Druid Hills High School. He was of being Jewish all your life. At the end it educated at Brown University and moved was not a prejudice but an ignorance, a hole to New York City to work as a lyricist with where the Judaism should be. Frank Loesser. For most of his career, he has been a writer of musicals, including the book and lyrics for the adaptation of The Memory and Reality Robber Bridegroom as well as Here’s Where In his “Preface” to the play (1988), Uhry I Belong, Swing, America’s Sweetheart, and explains the names and basis of the characters Alfred Uhry Parade, a musical based on the Leo Frank case. he created or remembered: He has also written film screenplays forMystic There was a real Miss Daisy. She was Pizza and Rich in Love. a friend of my grandmother’s in Atlanta, Driving Miss Daisy was Uhry's first non- back in the forties when I was a child. She musical play, and it grew out of his depression was a ‘maiden lady’ as we called it then, following a failed musical when he was the last of a big family, and she lived in considering leaving show business altogether. what I remember as a spooky old Victorian Instead he wrote a “straight play” and found house. There was a Hoke, too. He was the new success. He at first thought Daisy was just sometime bartender at our German-Jewish “a little play that could surely have appeal only country club.… And Boolie … well, I didn’t to my family, and to a few other southerners,” really know him, but he was the brother but audiences all over the world have affirmed of my dear Aunt Marjorie’s friend Rosalie. its universality. They were real people, all right, but I have used only their names in creating the three characters in Driving Miss Daisy. I wanted to use names that seemed particular to the Atlanta I grew up in. The actual characters, though, are made up of little bits and pieces of my childhood. Quite a bit of my grandmother, Lena Guthman Fox, and her four older sisters have gone into Miss Daisy herself.… Hoke is based on my grandmother’s chauffeur, Will Coleman, but also on Bill and Riley and Marvin and Pete and other First quotations from “Ballyhoo black chauffeurs I knew in those days. And and Daisy, Too,” American Theatre, Boolie is so many pieces of so many men April 1997. I know (including me, I suppose) that it would be hard for me to say what exactly comes from what. ASF/ 3 Driving Miss Daisy by Alfred Uhry A Timeline: Daisy's and Hoke's Lives in Historical Context Daisy Werthan’s/ Hoke's Life Events in America and the World Popular Culture and Everyday Life in U.S.