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Carden plays to be showcased during Mountain Heritage Day

By Rose Hooper
Westall Elizabeth Westall as Birdell "It's about as mountain heritage as you can get," Gary Carden said, describing his play "Birdell," which will be performed during Western Carolina University's Mountain Heritage Day festivities.

Performances will be at 2:30 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 28, and at 7:30 p.m. Thursday through Saturday, Sept. 26-28, at WCU's Niggli Theatre.

"Birdell Tolly is representative of our culture," said Carden, a Sylva author and playwright who has been called such a representative. "She should hit a responsive cord with anybody in the audience from this region."

The 86-year-old Tolly, played by veteran actress Elizabeth Westall, will stand on the stage, face the unknown audience and welcome them into her rugged, mountain life.

As the play begins Birdell is raking snakes - how she hates snakes because she remembers when the flood waters came, so did the snakes.

In a flashback to 1942, Birdell tells how her family was forced to move from their snug-in-the-hollow comfortable mountain home to make way for the Fontana Dam project.

Milton Higgins Milton Higgins III as Coy "It was their patriotic duty to move, or so they were told," said Carden. "The government told these mountain people to move - for their country's sake - so American could make aluminum for the war effort.

"Well, good gosh, nobody wanted to be accused of being unpatriotic, so like a herd of trusting sheep they all packed up and headed for higher ground," he said.

In one dramatic retelling, a young Birdell remains steadfast on her property as the Tennessee Valley Authority waters are first released. As it swirls up to her knees, she watches the snakes swim through her house and out the kitchen door.

Married at 16, Birdell will bring to life Wesley, the husband an audience never sees in body form.

"He tells lies and he is good at it," Birdell says, describing the man who told his young bride they had to "consecrate the garden."

"I never heard tell of that," the teenager tells her husband.

"Well, you want the garden to grow good, don't you?" Wesley asks her. "You want them tomatoes to be big and ripe, the corn to have full-bodied ears and them green beans to be really long, don't you?"

Of course Birdell does, so naively she asks, "How do you consecrate a garden?"

Wesley tells her to wait until it gets the dark of the night, with a hint of moonlight, then you get stark naked and - well, the rest is left to the audience's imagination.

A timberman who harvested trees at Hazel Creek, Wesley gives a perspective of how Ritter Lumber Co. destroyed the mainstay of an old-growth forest. The loss of homeland and the loss of a rich, heritage forest echoes throughout Carden's play, which Western officials say "treats Appalachian culture with authenticity and integrity."

Along with the debut of "Birdell," Carden will present "Coy," originally part of a full-length play titled "Land's End." Actor Milton Higgins III plays a young mountain man who once visited Land's End with his grandfather, a man now suffering from cancer. This play focuses on death and dying in Appalachian culture.

For more information or tickets to these performances, call Jim Manning at 227-3803. Admission is $3 for WCU students and $5 for all others.

Back to Archive: 09/26/02.