Smallpox

In the late eighteenth century, the cry “Smallpox!” was nearly powerful enough to change the course of history. In the span of a few months, an outbreak near Boston threatened nothing less than the colonies’ struggle for independence from Great Britain. The Smallpox War is an ensemble-based, highly theatrical telling of a little-known story that resonates in such issues as today’s tumultuous town hall meetings surrounding health care reform, the fear of diseases like HIV-AIDS, distrust of vaccination, and the roles/responsibilities of citizens in a republic.

The Smallpox War is a work in progress. At present, its anticipated completion time is the fall of 2010. Cast and set requirements.

It is a month after the Boston Tea Party, and there is rioting in Marblehead, just 18 miles away. A mob made up like Indians sets fire to a hospital and advances on the home of John Glover, one of the hospital’s owners. Glover is a wealthy ship owner and a leader of the Committee of Correspondence, part of the network Sam Adams formed to spread news about British actions. When the town refused to build a hospital for smallpox inoculation, Glover and three colleagues, including Adams’ protégé Elbridge Gerry, financed and built it themselves.

But though inoculation – called “variolation” – is practiced elsewhere in the colonies and around the world, it’s met with deep suspicion in Marblehead. Patients are quarantined on an island in the harbor, but that’s insufficient for those who fear the disease’s spread, those who believe any treatment would violate God’s will, and those who are politically opposed to Glover and friends.

Glover repels the rioters at his door in particularly dramatic fashion. But the hospital is gone, a total loss to the owners, and the town refuses permission to rebuild. The arsonists go free. Moreover, Glover’s young daughter is seriously ill from her reaction to treatment. Disgusted by the actions of their neighbors and the town, Glover and colleagues resign from the Committee and from the revolutionary movement. This is extremely troubling to Sam Adams, the wily firebrand and “community organizer” who sees Marblehead as vital in his efforts to unite the colonies in common cause against the British.

It’s a critical time. Boston is under British blockade to extract payment for the tea dumped into its harbor, and the merchants are close to capitulating. This, Adams fears, will jeopardize the march to freedom. The only solution is for every town to commit to a boycott of British goods. Marblehead is the lynchpin: as the second largest port in New England, it can save or destroy any boycott. But the town’s revolutionary leaders, Glover most adamant among them, are missing in action. In a departure from historical fact, a disguised Adams slips past the blockade to visit Marblehead and confront Glover. Can he, the most persuasive man in New England, persuade Glover, one of the most ornery, to return to the revolutionary cause and support the boycott?

Once called “a dirty, irregular, stinking place” colonial Marblehead was second only to Boston as a hub of revolutionary fervor. The Smallpox War uses historical fact and a modern dramatic approach to tell a story of how fear, rumor, and ignorance fought against good intentions to set neighbor against neighbor, threatening nothing less than the colonies’ quest for independence.

The play gives us a picture of a turbulent time when conflicting ideas about the kind of government the new country should create were taking shape in the minds of the Founding Fathers. How much authority should the people have? Are they competent to take the reins of power? Here, the issues that drove that debate are presented not in high-toned words, but in threat, tumult, and fire. Equally important, the play suggests that that debate has yet to be settled. It rages today in town hall meetings over health care reform, in the fear of diseases like HIV-AIDS, in the distrust of vaccination, in episodes of demagoguery and feints at mob rule that continue to infect our political system.

Epilogue: Elbridge Gerry became a signer of the Declaration of Independence and Vice President under James Madison. John Glover became a Revolutionary War general; among other service, he commanded the men who ferried Washington’s troops across the Delaware to attack Trenton at Christmas 1776. After the war, he retired to quiet civilian life with his family.

Synopsis (pdf version)

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