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  • The Heliotrope Bouquet by Scott Joplin and Louis Chauvin
    Cover photo by Richard Anderson

    The Heliotrope Bouquet by Scott Joplin and Louis Chauvin

    Eric Overmyer
    Acting Edition$11.95
    ePlay$15.00 + $10.00 per additional user
    Performance Rights

    Play Description

    A dreamy, meditative telling of the story of the father of ragtime Scott Joplin's rivalry with fellow musical genius Louis Chauvin.

    Production Info

    Cast: 11 total (5 female, 6 male, Multiethnic Cast)
    Full Length Drama (about 85 minutes)
    Multiple Sets
    Period Costumes
    Categories: The Plays Tags: 1900s
    • Reviews
    • About the Author(s)
    • About the Book
    • Special Notes

    Press Quotes

    “Eric Overmyer is not a playwright who does things simply, so it’s probably not enough to say that his latest theatrical conceit, THE HELIOTROPE BOUQUET BY SCOTT JOPLIN AND LOUIS CHAUVIN is a dream play. It’s really three dreams wrapping themselves around one another like languid tendrils of opium smoke stirred by a ceiling fan. The first dreamer is Scott Joplin, widely heralded as the king of the ragtime composers, although when we initially meet him, slumped over a piano by the dim light of a Harlem morning, fame and inspiration are behind him, and his tortured mind is obsessed with sultry images of the ‘poxy girls’ in the House of Blue Light, a New Orleans sporting house he frequented as a youth. The second, more impertinent, dreamer is Louis Chauvin — Joplin’s match, if not his better, in the art of syncopation — who had the misfortune (or the contrariness) to leave nothing behind him when he died of multiple sclerosis at twenty-six. The only concrete evidence of his genius is Heliotrope Bouquet, the slow drag two-step he wrote with Joplin, who saw to it that the sheet music got published. The third dreamer is Mr Overmyer himself, who has seized upon this fleeting collaboration and its few tangible details as the pretext for some graceful musings about the ephemeral nature of art and reputation …” —David Richards, The New York Times

    “Resounding with the bittersweet mood and slow grace of the ragtime music it celebrates, Eric Overmyer’s THE HELIOTROPE BOUQUET BY SCOTT JOPLIN AND LOUIS CHAUVIN is an elegiac fever dream of a play, a skillful weaving of fact and fancy played against a backdrop of memory, loss and the redemptive power of art … Overmyer’s insertion of fantastical elements into conventional narrative has been used to comic, or at least whimsical, effect before, notably in his ON THE VERGE, OR THE GEOGRAPHY OF YEARNING. But in HELIOTROPE, the playwright spins this technique into a poignant composition peppered with moments of joyful release … Overmyer’s rich, clever dialogue gives the play a sumptuous feel … Running under an hour and a half, HELIOTROPE is less like the ambitious ragtime opera that consumed Joplin’s final years than the brief but startling collaboration that gives the play its name. Ending on a tentative note of hope and revival, Overmyer adheres to Joplin’s musical tenet of ‘sweet resolution’ even as the cynical Chauvin’s admonition lingers: ‘Sweet resolution,’ he tells Joplin, ‘is the difference between music and life.'” —Greg Evans, Variety

    Author(s)

    • Eric Overmyer

      Eric Overmyer is a playwright and a television writer and producer. He graduated as a theater major from Reed College in 1973. His plays include ON THE VERGE, THE HELIOTROPE BOUQUET, IN A PIG'S VALISE, DON QUIXOTE DE LA JOLLA, NATIVE SPEECH, MI VIDA LOCA, IN PERPETUITY THROUGHOUT THE UNIVERSE, and DARK RAPTURE. Mr Overmyer has written extensively for television, including for Homicide: Life on the Street, The Wire and Law & Order, and has been nominated for two Emmy Awards. He received an Edgar Award for the television feature Rear Window. Overmyer was also a co-creator of the HBO series Treme, about musicians in post-Katrina New Orleans.

    Book Information

    Publisher BPPI
    Publication Date 8/1/1993
    Pages 68
    ISBN 9780881451085

    Special Notes

    If original stage producers credits appear in bold below, all licensees are required to include them in the following form on the title page in all programs distributed in connection with performances of the Play and in all advertising in which the full cast appears in size of type not less than ten percent (10%) of the size of the title of the Play:

    Originally produced by Center Stage, Baltimore

    In addition, the following must appear within all programs distributed in connection with performances of the Play:

    The Heliotrope Bouquet by Scott Joplin and Louis Chauvin is produced
    by special arrangement with Broadway Play Publishing Inc, NYC
    www.broadwayplaypub.com

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