 Press Room:
The Kentucky Cycle
(Parts I & II)
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THE
Characters
Franklin Biggs
Franklin Biggs is a black man, descended from Sallie Biggs, Michael Rowen’s
slave. He “controls” the African-American population in Howsen County. He
makes deals with both Joshua and James, neither of whom seems to really like
him, but he does not care. He gets what he wants for his community. He is a
successful businessman, who can deliver the “black vote” and can influence
his community to go along with whatever Blue Star Mining wants. Franklin
also lacks any connection to the land and does not share in Joshua’s joy at
seeing the wolf.
Sallie Biggs
Sallie Biggs is the slave Michael Rowen brings home just before Patrick
kills him. She is pregnant with Michael’s son, but she does not tell anyone
who the father is until Patrick tries to sell the boy to pay off debts. She
begs Patrick not to sell her son, but he does anyway. Her descendants lead
the civil rights struggle in the latter parts of the cycle.
Tommy Jackson
Tommy is Mary Anne’s husband. He has been in love with her for most of his
life. He took a mining job when all the farm land was sold to the Blue Star
Mine. He works hard and tries to help with the unionizing effort, but gets
frightened at the end. He sells out his fellow organizers and Mary Anne
publicly rejects him and he is killed by a group of angry strikers.
Morning Star
Morning Star is Michael Rowen’s Cherokee wife. He kidnaps her from her
tribe, rapes her, and treats her badly. After she attempts to escape, he
cuts the tendons in her leg so that she will always limp. Morning Star
becomes resigned to her fate; she teaches her son, Patrick, to hate and fear
his father. She finally convinces Patrick to kill his father so that she can
finally be free to live with her lover, Joe Talbert. When Patrick kills Joe
as well, Morning Star is devastated, but swears revenge. Years later, she
forces her son and grandsons to forfeit their land to Talbert’s heir. While
Morning Star may love her son, she never forgets that he is his father’s
child, nor what his father did to her and her people. Nor does she forgive.
Ezekiel Rowen
As Patrick Rowen’s direct heir, Zeke (also known as Ezekiel) inherits not
only his father’s bloodlust, but also his grandfather’s as well. Zeke
becomes a minister bent on revenge for his family against the Talberts. He
devises a plan to kill all the male Talberts, including 10-year-old Randall,
and destroy the two daughters (through rape and torture) so that there will
be no one to stop the Rowens from reclaiming the land. Unlike his brother,
Zeke does not see anything wrong with Patrick selling his own half-brother,
nor in threatening Randall, nor anything wrong with a minister planning
rapes and murders.
Jed Rowen
Jed Rowen carries on the family tradition of lying and murder when he kills
Richard Talbert and then oversees the murder of Randall Talbert and the
rapes of his sisters, Rose Anne and Julia Anne. Jed reclaims the Rowen land
but proves to be just as unlucky as his grandfather was. He sells the
mineral rights to his land for a dollar an acre when it is worth $15,000 to
$20,000 per acre.
Joshua Rowen
Joshua Rowen, along with James Talbert Winston and Franklin Biggs, is one of
the major characters in the last part of The Kentucky Cycle. He is,
unlike the rest of his ancestors, an honorable man. He is president of the
local miners’ union and tries to balance what is good for the individual
members and the overall industry. He agrees to allow the mine to keep
operating even though it is not safe and his son, Scotty, is killed in a
cave-in. Joshua feels a connection with the land, raped and neglected as it
is, which the other characters do not feel. He is connected to the land in a
way that not even Michael or Morning Star were. He feels the land’s pain and
rejoices in the opportunity to save it at the end of the cycle. He discovers
the body of Patrick’s sister, buried 200 years before, and forces the other
men to return the mummified body to the earth. Joshua ends the cycle in the
sheer joy of the wilderness as he watches a wolf run across the ridge.
Mary Anne Rowen
Mary Anne is Jed’s daughter. She is almost destroyed when the mining
companies come in and cut down her trees and rip the guts out of her
mountains. In a final defeat, she marries a local boy, Tommy Jackson, and
watches as all of her sons die of typhoid. Abe Steinman encourages Mary Anne
to think about a miners’ union. After his arrest and Tommy’s betrayal of the
cause, Mary Anne rejects her husband, takes back her maiden name, and leads
the fight for a union in the mines. She becomes a mythical figure who
inspires future generations of miners and their families.
Michael Rowen
Michael Rowen is the founder of the Rowen family and the main character in
the first two plays. He also establishes the moral tone of the plays. He is
a thief, a liar, and a murderer. As the cycle opens, Michael kills Earl Tod,
the Scottish trapper who trades with the Cherokee in the area. He then kills
his accomplice, Sam, to prove his “trustworthiness” to the Cherokee.
Michael’s bloodshed continues as he infects the Cherokee with smallpox and
kidnaps a young Cherokee woman, Morning Star, and makes her his wife. He
continues to threaten her and even kills the girl child that she has after
giving birth to a son. The violence, rage, and murder within Michael gets
passed down to all of his descendants, so Michael is the key character to
understanding the other characters in the play.
Patrick Rowen
Patrick Rowen is Morning Star and Michael’s son. Their other child, a girl,
is killed by Michael when she is born. Patrick never forgot that action and
hates his father for it. He also fears his father. He feels victimized by
everyone around him: his father, his mother, his love, Rebecca, and her
father, Joe Talbert. He kills his father, Rebecca’s father, forces his
mother to flee for her life, and rapes Rebecca in a watered-down version of
his own parents’ “marriage.” When Morning Star returns years later, she
witnesses Patrick selling everything to an unnamed stranger who owns the
mortgage on his property. Patrick even sells his own half-brother, Jessie
Biggs. His own son, Zach, cannot stand Patrick’s actions and flees. Unlike
his father, Patrick lives to be an ancient man who fantasizes about revenge.
Zachariah Rowen
Zachariah (also known as Zach) Rowen is Patrick’s youngest son. He sees no
difference between himself, his brother, and Jessie Biggs, the son of his
family’s slave, Sallie. When he finds out that Jessie is actually Patrick’s
half-brother, he pleads with his father not to sell him, and when Patrick
does, Zach leaves the farm never to be heard from again. Zach represents the
Rowens’ conscience and without him they descend into moral depravity.
Abe Steinman
Abe Steinman is a union organizer who decides that The Blue Star Mine, built
on what used to be the Rowen land, is ripe for unionizing. He is successful
in getting the miners’ wives and some of the miners to join him, but they
are betrayed by Tommy and he is killed.
Jeremiah Talbert
Jeremiah is Joe Talbert’s son, who returns to get revenge against Patrick.
Aided by Morning Star and the legal system, Jeremiah forces Patrick to sell
him everything he has and causes him to become a sharecropper on his own
land.
Richard Talbert
Richard Talbert is Jeremiah Talbert’s son and so owns the land that was
formerly Patrick’s land. Zeke and his son, Jed, plan their revenge and begin
with Richard. Jed joins Richard’s Civil War company and kills Richard in the
middle of a battle.
James Talbert Winston
James is the owner of the Blue Star Mine, descendant of Jeremiah Talbert,
and an emotionless capitalist. He does not care about the safety of his
workers, only his profit margin. When the cave-in kills over 20 miners,
including Joshua Rowen’s son, James cannot really apologize because it is
his fault. However, he and Joshua and Franklin Biggs become friends as the
movers and shakers of Howsen County. He digs up the body of Patrick Rowen’s
sister and wants to sell the beautifully beaded baby quilt Morning Star had
made for her doomed infant. At the end of the cycle, he realizes that mining
is a dead profession, but he cannot see any value to the land nor can he
feel any connection to this place. He, like Franklin, looks on as Joshua
yells with the wolf, thinking he has gone crazy.
Themes, Style and Historical Context
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Archives
A Day in
Hollywood
Nunsense
Dearly Beloved
The Secret
Garden
Nunsensations!
Woody Guthrie's American
Song
The Odd Couple
1776
Noises OFF
Cabaret
Oliver
Deathtrap
2005
John Muir Summer Festival
Over
the Tavern
Judgment
at Nuremberg
AIDA
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