(2003) Written with support of a New York State Council on the Arts “Individual Artist’s Commission.” Percolating Playwrights Series: Theatre in the Square, Atlanta, 2003. Directed by Jasson Minadakis.

[Excerpt]

 FRANCES

I read the diary you wrote on Butler Island.

FANNY

It’s not a diary. They’re letters I sent to Elizabeth.

FRANCES

They’re full of exagerrations.

FANNY

I went to a boarding school in France, Fan. I’d never seen anything like that in my ife.

FRANCES

No one was mistreated on Butler Island.

FANNY

Your father made me promise I wouldn’t publish them, and I didn’t.

FRANCES

Nothing like that ever happened. I was with you.

 FANNY

You were two years old, Fan.

(Beat)

Do you remember that trip we took together up the Rhine?  Just before you went to live with your father in Philadelphia.

FRANCES

When I fell in love with Franz Liszt?

FANNY

You and me and Elizabeth and every other female on the boat.

 FRANCES

But I was the only one little enough to sit in his lap.

 FANNY

He had that extravagant hair and played those scherzos that made us all delirious.

FRANCES

I remember his huge fingers racing across the keyboard and the castles up on the cliffs.

 FANNY

We were happy on that trip, weren’t we?

FRANCES

We were.