From the playwright:

In the “Fatal Interview” chapter of his invaluable What Lips My Lips Have Kissed: The Loves and Love Poems of Edna St. Vincent Millay, biographer Daniel Mark Epstein — discussing the dynamic between Edna and George Dillon — says, “By this time she was fairly desperate, and while it is never wholly safe to deduce biography from poetry, both her poetry and letters imply that it was Dillon’s resistance that was keeping them apart.”

Well, it’s not only not “safe to deduce biography from poetry,” it’s not safe to deduce biography from any so-called reliable biographical sources. Not wholly. Not without some significant reservations. Not without a sense of all biography being quite insufficient, regardless of how competently handled, thorough and pure in intent. A sense of humility is demanded. For, as we all know from our own lives, there are eerie aspects of each soul which cannot be captured by a biographer. Relationships, failures and accomplishments, moments of happiness and despair which defy the most scholarly research.

The great biographers acknowledge this. But readers and audiences do not have such an attitudinal set. Rather, (for history-based works) they read and go to the theatre, as a rule, to get a handle on a person, relationship, event, etc. Like viewers of Entertainment Tonight!

Tennesse Williams told me — just before I visited Steepletop as a youngster — that “to label is to remove the unpleasantness of having to deal with an object or a person.” In Millay Song Against the Day I attempt to address the unpleasantness and ecstasies of my visit to the farmhouse without reducing the experience to commercially palatable sound bites. And without literal truth dominating.

Examples: I use lines written for Cora, Edna’s mother, as if they were addressed to others; There is no attempt to adhere to the architectural integrity of Steepletop; Edna’s servants are certainly not my servants. And Pierrot and Columbine live!* And so on.

But truth is imaginary, as Blaise Cendrars pointed out so well. And we must not copy through a transfer paper nor write a definitive confession/expose. Nor hang on the views of experts, spouses… or any alignment of sincere loved ones, close as they may seem to be to a given subject. Panta rhei. Everything is in flux. That means everyone too. Is and was… always. Regardless, it is not truth, but faith which keeps the world alive.

And I am all about contributing to such a positive life force in these troubled times. Which means always.

*The fact that these Aria da Capo characters of Millay’s have so much latitude on stage is one of the primary reasons that the play is not weighed down by naturalism/realism. Why the biographical, historical and psychological underpinnings of the work are truly only supportive of the play’s lyrical aspects. That which can be taken literally here, and that which might be taken as (non-theatrical) talk is designed to work dramatically in conjunction with Pierrot’s and Columbine’s movement. Secondary characters in one sense, they are constant reminders that the play is greatly about truth being imaginary, a function, partly, of “Song in Mystery.” Though they cannot be seen or heard, they can be felt by and feel for the characters. Deeply.

Notes: Singular introductory program notes — providing a special profile for Edna (and others, including Pierrot and Columbine) — are available upon request.

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For over fifty years biographers have driven themselves to distraction over the question of what kept Edna at the St. Regis Hotel for six months in 1937, virtually without contact with her loving husband. She was sick and, yes, her lover George Dillon spent time with her there, but… as she related in a letter to the poet Rolfe Humphries, “something else happened….” This is important to Millay aficionados. But the mysterious scenario is pregnant with possible meanings which are universal.

No one really knows what happened. However, two singular happenings took place just prior to her stay at the St. Regis. One, a fire totally destroyed the only manuscript for Conversation at Midnight, her philosophical closet drama; the “cost” of reproducing it from her photographic memory was incalculable. Two, driving with Eugen one strange night, the Cadillac door inexplicably flew open, hurling her “out into the pitch-darkness.” Hmm.

Of course, what one makes of the intriguing aspects of it all depends on whether one approaches the elements as Hercule Poirot or Inspector Clouseau. Well, Millay Song Against the Day is too lyrical for the likes of Columbo, Miss Marple, et. al. It addresses the darkness which envelops us all… touching upon what might be false memory, but — assuredly — embracing Inner Light.

It is not about the minutia of Millay. It is my love song to you, for a better day.