THE EMBERS QUINTET SYNOPSES
EMBERS OF THE FIRST FIRES
“Embers Of The First Fires” has a cast of two men and two women, and is set in 1899, in the great room of the Embers dynasty home. The young artist Jack Embers and his wife are summoned by his father, Joseph Embers and his mother Zetta Embers to return to work in their mountain logger business. Jack had been instructed to bring a nurse for his ailing mother but instead brings a woman who has been Jack’s housekeeper, artist’s model and as is revealed, pregnant older wife, Alyce Embers. Joseph immediately puts an arm’s length distance between himself and Alyce. The revelation of Alyce’s pregnancy brings only suspicion because Jack, when a teenager, had been extremely ill with the mumps and may be incapable of fathering an heir. When Joseph takes Jack on an extended business trip and away from the Embers home, Alyce has the opportunity treat the ailing Zetta with concoctions Alyce had learned from her traveling medical potion father, some of which include tinctures of laudanum and coca leaves. Zetta teaches Alyce needlepoint art while subtly probing Alyce about her past and relationship with Jack. Accidents and labor discord erupt at their logging camps. Sabotage wrecks miles of new water flumes carrying logs to their mill. When racial strife and hate break into open violence, his offstage uncle Jake, affectionately known as the local Paul Bunyan, draws Jack into the middle of the two sides, resulting in Jack breaking an arm. As violence mounts, the dangers of turn of century logging threaten Jack and the Embers family’s wellbeing. Alyce, fearful for her husband’s safety, uses the suspect parentage of her new baby to force Joseph to cede to her demands. If Joseph does not, she will make Jack move away with her, taking the Embers only grandson and heir with them. Joseph, knowing too well his own part in the shameful nature of the baby’s conception, will do anything to keep that secret. But little can be hidden from his wife, Zetta, who is rebuffed when she confronts him over what she feels is his excessive concern for Arvilla, the young adult daughter of one of his loggers who had been killed in an accident that may have been caused by brother Jacob’s drunken neglect. “Embers Of The First Fires” lives in the dangers of felling giant timber, in the prejudices of mixed race and indigenous workers, in the rivalries of families, and the stifling bonds on married women. Set in the great western forest at the onset of the twentieth century and the first fires of the American labor movement, the play asks, where are the boundaries of obligation, what is personal freedom and at what price do we make our choices.
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EMBERS OF THE ANCIENT FOREST
“Embers Of The Ancient Forest” has a cast of two men and two women, and is set in 1920, in the great room of the Embers dynasty home. The Great War is over and Jack Embers, the heir of a timber dynasty, has not returned, his remains never found in the carnage of the war. Joseph Embers, the patriarch of the Embers family and their timber empire, his wife, Zetta, as well as Jack’s widow, Alyce, cling to the desperate hope of his survival. Evening, the women labor on their needle point while they endearingly recite passages of mud-stained letters Jack had scrawled in his tent just beyond the battlefield. In the years since the 1918 Armistice, the hope of his return is barely diminished, until one day Alyce’s young son, Jesse, brings in from the mailbox a new letter from Jack. Found in the pocket of a German prisoner of war, the letter rekindles hope and sews discord in the family. Joseph Embers is quick to disregard the letter as false hope while Zetta swells with certainty of her son’s imminent return.
As the family duels with their remembered and imagined realities, slanders are hurled at Alyce over her lurid past and her sexual relationship with the artistic Jack. Zetta will have nothing of Joseph’s long-standing intolerance of Jack’s supposed ‘white feather’ refusal to enlist in wartime combat duty, instead enlisting as a non-combat ambulance driver. Zetta rejects her husband’s command to never wear the trousers Alyce had given her and stakes out her independence by booking passage on a ship to France to find the missing Jack. When Zetta defiantly storms off to pack her travel trunk, Alyce seeks leverage over Joseph by threatening him with her knowledge of his infidelity with the offstage Arvilla, and the rumor of a son Joseph may have fathered by her. Joseph retorts that she is not without her own dark secret, since Joseph is also the father of one of her own two sons. Overhearing their remarks, the young Jesse is stunned about his questionable parentage and is quick to reject both his mother, his grandfather, and his family legacy.
A bloody accident at one of the Embers’ high mountain logging camps, gives Joseph an opportunity to test the mettle of Jesse who, while showing his leadership toughness, also reveals his compassion for living creatures he could not kill. The brutal incident toughens the young man leading him to accept his future as one of the heirs to the Embers dynasty. As the play reaches its climax, the Embers family has been ripped asunder, with the women embracing the newfound freedoms of the postwar era, Jesse resigned to the inevitability of his future in his grandfather’s business, and Joseph unbending in his certainty of righteousness. Jack’s war letters, brutal in their descriptions of the war, yet calm and assuring in word and tone, have ignited a spark that turns the family into a wildfire of pain and revolt that will be the family’s future for the generations that follow.
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EMBERS OF VIRGIN TIMBER
“Embers Of Virgin Timber,” with a cast of two men and two women, is set in the year 1942 in the great room of the Embers home. Jesse Embers, the heir to a timber baron, is surprised by a visit from a pregnant teenage girl who introduces herself as Emma Embers, the wife of Jesse’s older brother, Carlton Embers, a Navy officer. Jesse and Rachael, his housekeeper and longtime lover, welcome Emma while hiding their illicit relationship. As the days pass, the pregnant and volatile Emma descends into mystic, uncontrollable madness, forcing Jesse to commit her to an asylum. Carlton Embers has been home for only minutes when he learns Jesse has committed Emma to a home for “lunatics.” When asylum attendants come for Emma, Carlton says this will torpedo his Navy career. The brothers come to blows while recounting their pass rivalries. Both men, at separate times, had been given the choice to go to prison or join the military. Carlton, accused of molestation, joined the Navy. Jesse, accidently shooting Mr. Ramsey’s sheep in the ‘mutton button,’ served a year in the Philippines.
When baby Cloris is brought home from the asylum, the two men are forced to enlist the wife’s nearly identical half-sister, Agnes Kershaw (played by the same actor), to care for the infant. Agnes insists the brothers bend to her commands for the baby’s needs. During one of Emma’s repeated escapes attempts, she is believed to have drowned and her body lost in the torrent. The now widowed Carlton’s impending return to the Navy leaves no family member to care for baby Cloris, except Jesse. Neither brother finding that acceptable, Jesse suggests Carlton urge Agnes to stay, even marrying her if she will have him.. On their wedding night, Agnes refuses to consummate the marriage, frustrating Carlton back into alcoholism. Trying to heal his relationship with his chaste wife, Carlton agrees to resign his Navy officer’s commission and do his part in managing the family timber business.
On the eve of World War Two, as the two men fight a forest fire at their lumber camp, the insane Emma, believed dead, enters the home, and tries to take the baby Cloris. Rachael fends off Emma who then flees into the forest. Neither brother believes Rachael’s story that Emma is alive. Jesse, sympathetic to Rachael’s compassion for Emma, reluctantly agrees to trek through the snow-filled forest looking for a ghost. Jesse’s efforts to find Emma at a high mountain fire tower inadvertently reignite the forest fire which soon threatens the entire valley with an inferno of destruction. The family grows anxious when Jesse does not return from the mountain and is feared dead. Days later, Jesse returns to learn that Carlton, confessing to having lied about resigning his Navy commission, has been called back to duty, Shore Patrol waiting for him outside. After Carlton leaves, Agnes confronts Jesse, who admits that Emma is alive, and he has put her in a private nursing home under an assumed name. With Emma alive, Agnes is faced with a dilemma, continuing the deceit or ruining Carlton as a bigamist. Agnes, Jesse, and Rachael swear a vow of silence and to secretly use assets from the timber business for Emma’s care. Jesse has also been called back into service, leaving Agnes to run the timber business alone. As the curtain falls, the radio plays a list of names of soldiers killed in combat, including Lt. Jesse Embers, who was awarded a bronze star for, “sacrificing his life to save a brother in arms.”
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EMBERS OF FALLEN GIANTS
“Embers Of Fallen Giants,” with a cast of two men and two women, is set in the year 1963 in the great room of the Embers dynasty home. Carlton Embers, surviving heir to a timber empire, struggles with alcohol abuse, relentlessly belittling his son, Carl Embers Jr., as well as bullying his wife, Agnes, who had run the business while Carlton served overseas in World War Two.
The young and gentle Carl brings home Meredith Abernathy, a pregnant classmate who has been cast out by her strict religious family. Loyal to his childhood friend, he allows his parents to believe that he is the baby’s father and is soon trapped into an overnight marriage. After the baby Cloris is born, Meredith uses the infant as leverage to callously climb the steps of power in the family, Learning the Embers timber company is facing a critical shortage of trees for their mill, Meredith visits the parents of baby Cloris’s real father, the offstage Brian Hansen. Meredith, using their recognition of the baby as their granddaughter, threatens Brian’s entry into medical school unless they sell rights to their thousands of acres of timber.
Meredith’s own father, the offstage Clyde Abernathy, is severely injured in a logging accident of his own causing and becomes another lever in Meredith’s climb to the top. When Carlton Sr. has a stroke, she maneuvers him into a rest home giving her de-facto controlling power in the family and its timber empire. Seeing Meredith’s ambition to be the queen of her mountain kingdom complete, Agnes warns the unrepentant Meredith, “everyone grows old, even you, Meredith, even you.”
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EMBERS OF FORGOTTEN FIRES
“Embers Of Forgotten Fires,” with a cast of one man and three women, is set in 2010 in the great room of the Embers dynasty home. Meredith Embers, impaired by strokes and faltering memory, shouts imperiously to be served tea and toast by granddaughter, the young Kelly. Carol, Meredith’s daughter and Kelly’s mother, flies in from her husband’s pig farm and is confronted by a statuesque stranger, Cloris, who shows up at the door in stylish attire, spiked stilettoes, trunks of luggage, and a declaration that she is the legal owner of the Embers house.
Carol and Kelly do not recognize the intruder, but Meredith calls her Carl Embers, her husband who was thought dead. Carl, Cloris, expresses her love for Meredith, who had demanded years before that Cloris leave when the embarrassment of the transformation into a drag performer had become public. Carol is incensed that her father. who had abandoned her when she was young, should be welcomed. The young Kelly, recognizing the stranger’s professional name, Cloris the Magnificent, tries to make room in her grandmother’s home and her mother’s heart for this flamboyant apparition.
That evening when Cloris kisses Meredith, who screams that she is being attacked, Carol reacts violently against her father. In the morning Cloris tries to soothe Carol with memories of her past and homemade waffles sweetened with wild blackberries. Not placated, Carol is determined to take Meredith back to her pig farm in Idaho. When she tries to pack Meredith’s clothing for the flight, Meredith again reacts violently, beating Carol with her cane and both women wrestle on the floor. Kelly returns from class finding Carol locked in a threatening pose over Meredith who is lying on the floor and accusing Carol of trying to kill her.
Kelly returns from attending a drag performance mounted by Cloris and is filled with exuberant praise for Cloris the Magnificent, her talent, poise, and command. When Cloris comes home, still in full performance attire and make-up, Kelly plays jazzy music and insists that Cloris lip sync to one of her show songs. After Kelly exits to get toast for Meredith, Carol hurls homophobic insults against Cloris. Stripping away her costume, wig, and make-up, Cloris tells her daughter how she has become hardened to such abuse. Removing the last of her drag attire, Cloris tells Carol of her journey from young, displaced timber baron to renown drag performer, to aging, penniless man, who stands before her daughter, now totally naked, except for her glittering stiletto shoes. Carol repeats the praise Kelly had given to her performance, but Cloris says Kelly’s grandiose description was false, invented by Kelly’s wishful imagination.
Evenings later, Kelly presents Meredith, dressed in a glamorous version of her youth, to Carol and Cloris. However, the elated Meredith suffers another stroke and is taken away by ambulance. Cloris is not allowed to go with Meredith because the driver does not believe she could be the husband. Some weeks pass, Meredith is brought home but has little recall of her past or her family. Carol has left her pig farmer husband, Kelly has graduated Community College, and Cloris, after forty years of rejection by her family, with leading lady determination, embraces her new role as matriarch of the Embers dynasty and head of the reinvigorated Embers Timber Company.