The Deep Divide
Dramatizing West Virginia's Tragedy
Ann Murray is a writer and producer in Pittsburgh, Pa.
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Sharon Basco produced this piece.
In the past 10 years, mountaintop mining has created a deep divide in coal country. Critics lament this strip mining practice. It has leveled mountaintops in West Virginia, Kentucky and Virginia and buried over 700 miles of streams with rocky debris. But many politicians, including President Bush, say the industry has provided jobs and cheap energy. David Selby has brought this volatile topic to the stage. Selby is a nationally known actor and West Virginia native.
Selby's new play, Final Assault, looks at the conflict between the economic benefits of the coal industry and the harm that surface mining can do to the environment and people. Ann Murray recently traveled to the Capital Center Theater in Charleston, W.V. She talked with the playwright, producer and actors during auditions for the premiere of Final Assault.
Murray: David Selby's great-grandfather died in a coal mine explosion. His grandfather was crippled by years of working in a West Virginia mine. This legacy has led Selby to see his play as a mixture of rights and obligations: the right to work, to protest, to protect property, and the obligation to give back when great wealth is taken from the land. The stuff of an all-but-forgotten theatrical tradition.
Selby: I guess in the '30s or '40s, the agitprop plays were socially oriented. We've gotten away from that so if you think about going back to plays like All The Presidents Men or the film or what ever, I don't know that those things would be done today. So I thought this is a perfect vehicle for theater.
(Natural Sound)
Actor: Are these closed auditions? (Natural sound of actors talking in lobby goes under.)
Murray: Tonight the theater is laced with local actors. Barbara Bayes sits quietly in the mezzanine. She's reading for the part of Peggy, a 50 year-old woman who reluctantly sells her home to a mountaintop mining company. Bayes says she applauds the play's theme.
Bayes: This is the second play I've auditioned for in 53 years. The topic really draws me. Anyway, we can get out the message of how horrible mountaintop removal is and what it's doing to destroy southern Appalachia, anyway we can get it out is good and I'm all for it coming out in the arts.
Jamison Selby: So you're here to read for Sally?
Actor: Yes, Sally.
Murray: (Natural Sound: Under audition room) As Bayes waits her turn to read for Selby and his son, the play's director, another actor auditions for Sally, the lead character. Sally is a 40 year-old woman who has returned to southern West Virginia to care for her aging father. She discovers that their mountain will be flattened if mining operations expand. So she takes up the fight to rally her neighbors and stop the coal company.
Actor as Sally: The only money that ever stayed in this community was miners' wages. All the rest went out of state, except for the crumbs they put in politicians' pockets. It's hard to break a hundred year-old habit.
Man: You have got to ease up. Lay off yourself. Get off the road. Stay home. Look at you. The day is just getting started and you're exhausted.
Sally: I'm supposed to be rejuvenated. (The audition fades under Selby.)
Selby: I had read about a number of women who are activists in this environmental area regarding mountaintop removal. And I sort of combined a lot of women into one character. What is it about these women who are strong and worthy opponents? My goodness. They are fighters. I just fell in love with the character. Is the word homage? So Sally in a way is an homage to the ones that are still out there.
Murray: Producer David Whole believes Final Assault captures the essence of the activists who are out there confronting the coal companies. He says the play succeeds by showing how Sally and the other characters relate in the midst of great conflict and opposition.
Wohle: A good play is both political and personal. It deals with human issues as well as social issues. Men and women. Boys and girls. Sort of a sense of how do I stay home, given the fact that they're blasting off parts of this mountain and they're falling on my house and my Mom wants to sell my land and my ancestors have been here for years and years. So there's that kind of personal struggle in the play as well.
Murray: These personal struggles, according to Wohle, place a spotlight on the broader issues of environmental justice. Environmental justice can be defined as meaningful community interaction with government and industry decision-makers.
Wohle: I mean it's people who make decisions about how we're going to confront the land -- what we're going to do to mine coal. I think one of the points that David makes is when you look at the counties in the United States where coal mining has played a large part of the economy, they're the poorest counties in the United States.
Barbara Bayes reads as Peggy: I don't have a choice. There was a house across the way from us, one beside it and a house down in that bottom. Now they're gone. All of us women used to walk the mountain together in the morning and gather greens and talk about all the good stuff. Then we'd come back and scramble eggs with the greens and some cheese and make some corn bread. And talk some more good stuff. Nothing better. But dust so bad now, it's hard to breathe. Just talking here, I get upset.
Wohle: If coal and that kind of industry is so good and it's supposed to be so positive, where is the connection? Why don't the people that are in the counties have a better standard of living?
Murray: In an attempt to address these kinds of questions, Selby says he has struggled to avoid stereotypes but has tried to maintain his voice.
Selby: (Sighs) I just think you have to avoid those cliches. For instance, you can't make the coal whatever the arch villain. I'm not pretending to disguise my point of view, my opinions perhaps or where I come from. But I do hope that I tell it as honestly as I can.
Selby reading as Pete: Let the valleys be raised and the mountains laid low -- this country wouldn't be what it is without these mountains. What would Switzerland be without the Alps? Surely you say no one would do this. How does something so grand go away, fall apart? How could they have possibly done that?
Music: I sing the glory of the mountains high... of the crystal waters and a purple sky.
This is Ann Murray for TomPaine.com
The world premiere of Final Assault is scheduled for April 9-13 in the Walker Theater in downtown Charleston, West Virginia. For more information visit The Charleston Stage Company Web site. For more information about mountaintop removal mining go to the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition and the U.S. Office of Surface Mining Web sites.
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Published: Mar 13 2003
