Free Alfred Uhry - Driving Miss Daisy by Alfred Uhry

Preface to the New Edition
     
    By Alfred Uhry
     
     
     
     
     
     
    I n 1985 I wrote a three-character play about my childhood in Atlanta, Georgia. Playwriting 101 says write what you know and that’s what I did. The play was scheduled to run for five weeks in a seventy-four-seat theatre on the far west side of Manhattan. I figured that would be the end of it, because I had written very specifically about time and place. I was afraid that most people wouldn’t relate to it. Driving Miss Daisy ran for three years Off-Broadway and has been performed in more languages than I can count, in theatres all over the world, and it was made into an Oscar-winning movie. I guess I was wrong about it’s appeal.
    Flash forward twenty-five years. The play has come to Broadway for the first time, starring James Earl Jones, Vanessa Redgrave and Boyd Gaines (not bad). In those twenty-five years a lot has happened. We have been engaged in three wars, suffered an attack on our own soil, and elected an African-American president. So is the play I wrote about Atlanta all those years ago still relevant?
    Sadly, it is. There’s an exchange between Miss Daisy and her chauffeur, Hoke Coleburn, in one of the latter scenes. She says, “Isn’t it wonderful the way things are changing?” and he answers, “Things changing, but they ain’t change all that much.” Even with all the advances we have made, in this country there is still deep and bitter prejudice in the hearts of many. Our labels—Jew, African-American, Muslim, etc.—override who we are for far too many of us.
    Each of the characters in my play learns to look beneath the surface and find the humanity beneath the skin. One way or another, I think we all want the same thing—the opportunity to live the way we want to live and do what we want to do. Maybe it’s not that simple, but I like to think it is. And if spending time with Miss Daisy and Hoke and Boolie pushes anybody in that direction, I’ll be a happy man.
     
    October 2010
New York
     



CHARACTERS
     

     
DAISY WERTHAN
A WIDOW (AGE 72-97)
HOKE COLEBURN
HER CHAUFFEUR (AGE 60-85)
BOOLIE WERTHAN
HER SON (AGE 40-65)
     
     
    TIME AND PLACE
     
    THIS PLAY TAKES PLACE FROM 1948 TO 1973, MOSTLY IN ATLANTA, GEORGIA. THERE ARE MANY LOCALES. THE SCENERY IS MEANT TO BE SIMPLE AND EVOCATIVE. THE ACTION SHIFTS FREQUENTLY AND, I HOPE, FLUIDLY.

 
     
    In the dark we hear Daisy call from offstage: “Idella, I’m gone to market.” A car ignition is turned on; then we hear a horrible crash, followed by bangs and booms and wood splintering. The very loud noise stops suddenly and the lights come up on Daisy Werthan’s living room. Daisy, age seventy-two, is wearing a summer dress and high-heeled shoes. Her hair, her clothes, her walk, everything about her suggests bristle and feistiness and high energy. She appears to be in excellent health. Her son, Boolie Werthan, forty, is a businessman, Junior Chamber of Commerce style. He has a strong, capable air. The Werthans are Jewish, but they have strong Atlanta accents.
     
    DAISY: No!
    BOOLIE: Mama!
    DAISY: No!
    BOOLIE: Mama!
    DAISY: I said no, Boolie, and that’s the end of it.
    BOOLIE: It’s a miracle you’re not laying in Emory Hospital—or decked out at the funeral home. Look at you! You didn’t even break your glasses.
    DAISY: It was the car’s fault.
    BOOLIE: Mama, the car didn’t just back over the driveway and land on the Pollard’s garage all by itself. You had it in the wrong gear.
    DAISY: I did not!
    BOOLIE: You put it in reverse instead of drive. The police report shows that.
    DAISY: You should have let me keep my La Salle.
    BOOLIE: Your La Salle was eight years old.
    DAISY: I don’t care. It never would have behaved this way. And you know it.
    BOOLIE: Mama, cars don’t behave. They are behaved upon. The fact is you, all by yourself, demolished that Packard.
    DAISY: Think what you want. I know the truth.
    BOOLIE: The truth is you shouldn’t be allowed to drive a