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Blue
A modern fable about family, fallibility, and finding your way.
The Alexander sisters have pretty hard-knock lives over in Worried Creek, Kentucky, in the late 1980s. April is a pregnant prize-fighter, May is dead, and the bookish June was born with the “family curse”: bright blue skin. Shamed into a hermit-like existence, June hasn’t entirely abandoned hope. When a Los Angeles plastic surgeon shows up at their door in Kentucky, all of the Alexanders’ lives (and deaths) take unexpected turns.
NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR
Some stories just stick with you. Sometime around 2005, I read an article about the “blue people of Kentucky,” families contending with a strange condition called methemoglobinemia that sometimes renders one’s skin bright blue. There were few of them left. They were from an area of Kentucky where my mother’s ancestors once lived. I emailed the article to myself, for further exploration. It stayed in my email inbox for a decade.
In 2015, I applied for a writing residency that required you walk in with an idea for a play, “but not a word of it yet written.” I applied with a pitch for a play about blue people in Kentucky, that would explore family, guilt, privilege, and the ways we hold ourselves back or push ourselves forward.
Blue was born.
This is a stranger play than what I usually write; it has a dead narrator, for one thing, and several moments of magical realism. But in some ways, it’s risky less because of its strangeness and more because of the weighty issues and sometimes-painful topics it explores. Finding the right balance of humor, darkness, and uneasy questions was a challenge for me as a writer— and hopefully will provide good, worthy challenges for the actors, directors, and designers who produce this play.
The Alexander sisters have pretty hard-knock lives over in Worried Creek, Kentucky, in the late 1980s. April is a pregnant prize-fighter, May is dead, and the bookish June was born with the “family curse”: bright blue skin. Shamed into a hermit-like existence, June hasn’t entirely abandoned hope. When a Los Angeles plastic surgeon shows up at their door in Kentucky, all of the Alexanders’ lives (and deaths) take unexpected turns.
NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR
Some stories just stick with you. Sometime around 2005, I read an article about the “blue people of Kentucky,” families contending with a strange condition called methemoglobinemia that sometimes renders one’s skin bright blue. There were few of them left. They were from an area of Kentucky where my mother’s ancestors once lived. I emailed the article to myself, for further exploration. It stayed in my email inbox for a decade.
In 2015, I applied for a writing residency that required you walk in with an idea for a play, “but not a word of it yet written.” I applied with a pitch for a play about blue people in Kentucky, that would explore family, guilt, privilege, and the ways we hold ourselves back or push ourselves forward.
Blue was born.
This is a stranger play than what I usually write; it has a dead narrator, for one thing, and several moments of magical realism. But in some ways, it’s risky less because of its strangeness and more because of the weighty issues and sometimes-painful topics it explores. Finding the right balance of humor, darkness, and uneasy questions was a challenge for me as a writer— and hopefully will provide good, worthy challenges for the actors, directors, and designers who produce this play.
58 pages, Paperback
Published January 1, 2019
2 people want to read
About the author
Beth Kander
19 books121 followersBeth Kander is a USA Today bestselling writer with tangled roots in the Midwest and Deep South. The granddaughter of immigrants, her work often explores how worlds old and new intertwine—or collide. Beth earned an MSW from the University of Michigan and an MFA in Creative Writing from Mississippi University for Women, where she has also served as a visiting professor. She calls Chicago home these days, and is lucky to live there with her very favorite characters: her heroic husband, their two brave, hilarious kids, and a giant rescue dog named Oz.
For more: www.bethkander.com
For more: www.bethkander.com
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
August 19, 2020
This is a departure in several ways from what this author has done in the past beginning with a narrator who is dead. Second, this is based on an actual situation that most people who see the show would will be totally unaware of and will find nearly unbelievable.
This is the story of a family living in the Eastern Kentucky Appalachian hills with all the poverty and disadvantage that goes along with it. But, in addition, the one member who appears that she has what it takes to break free from the poverty and succeed has been stricken by the genetic curse of her family - blue skin.
I'm not a great reader but this was a play that I couldn't put down until I finished it. It was spellbinding. Don't pass this one up.
This is the story of a family living in the Eastern Kentucky Appalachian hills with all the poverty and disadvantage that goes along with it. But, in addition, the one member who appears that she has what it takes to break free from the poverty and succeed has been stricken by the genetic curse of her family - blue skin.
I'm not a great reader but this was a play that I couldn't put down until I finished it. It was spellbinding. Don't pass this one up.
May 9, 2024
Haunting.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews