Underground
This
four-act play opens as Lenora and her teenage daughter, Emmeline,
assist young Alice
in childbirth, as all struggle in hiding on the Mormon
Underground. Young Alice, like Lenora, is
married to a Mormon elder with more than one wife, and if arrested by federal
marshals, Lenora and Alice will be forced to provide damning court testimony
against their husbands. Lenora’s family
and Alice manage narrow escapes during the first half of the play. But despite this good fortune, Lenora faces
the resistance of her son Ruston against joining his father on a mission for
the Church, and young Emmeline cannot contain her
resentment that Zina Mae, the legitimate daughter of
her father’s first and legal wife, is not restricted to life in hiding.
It is in the
context of a budding religion in the middle of a remote Idaho territory that Lenora must raise her
family alone and find her place in her community. She encourages Emmeline
to become a midwife, because trained midwives are rare on the Underground, but
when Alice and Emmeline are devastated by the death
of Alice’s
child, Lenora insists that Emmeline must not disrupt
her traditional role by becoming a fully-licensed doctor. Lenora works faithfully to send Ruston on a mission, but
despite Ruston’s
desire to distract her with his newfound industriousness, her single religious
focus drives him away to Utah. Emmeline, pushed by
her resentment of Zina Mae and pulled by the desire
to attend medical school, also abandons her mother to the Underground. Lenora gains some strength when her husband Hyram, also in hiding, manages to visit her and bring news
of the Mormon Manifesto to end all polygamous marriages. However, when she and Hyram
conclude that the Manifesto forbids only future polygamous marriages, but
allows those marriages already in existence to continue, Lenora is abandoned by
those in her Idaho
community who had previously given her the strongest support. From this lonely position, Lenora must find a
place for herself within the legal strictures of the United States and within the Mormon
community.
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Play Structure:
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4 Acts
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Cast size:
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7
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Gender:
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5 female, 2 male
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Period:
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1887 - 1890
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Location:
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Franklin, a Mormon village in
Idaho
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Set:
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One set, sparse furniture to
denote separate areas
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