About the Play:

Come Slowly, Eden is a full-length drama by Norman Rosten. This play seeks to unravel mysteries about the sequestered life of Emily Dickinson, piecing together insights from her letters, her mentor, and her family. Come Slowly, Eden is a vital and affecting dramatization of the life and works of the memorable New England poet.

Come Slowly, Eden is the story of one of the greatest of of American poets, Emily Dickinson (1830-1886), that notoriously reclusive New England lady who hid from the world and wrote her passionate, glorious poetry in secret. The play opens shortly after her death. Her younger sister and closest confidante, Lavinia, has discovered hundreds of her unpublished poems and letters in a bureau drawer: small packets of paper tied neatly together with ordinary sewing thread. With the help of Thomas Higginson, a literary critic of the time who had earlier befriended Emily, the poems and letters she left behind are used to reveal this contradictory woman whose life on the surface appeared to be one of puritanical denial, yet whose writing showed a human being hungry for love and personal fulfillment. The play is a search. We weigh clues in her poems and letters, and in the memories of Lavinia and brother Austin, as we reconstruct Emily's life. We see her as a carefree girl at home and as a young lady in growing conflict with her father; we witness her meeting with the minister who was to have such a crucial influence upon her. We follow the torment of her love for this man who was unattainable and watch her slow withdrawal from the world. It becomes clear that Emily was a creature before her time, subject to her day's social conventions but rebelling against them; cherishing an impossible romance but refusing to settle for less; and, more important, pouring her joy and anguish into her poetry. That poetry is embedded in the narrative as jewels within a crown. Come Slowly, Eden is an unsolved mystery, and at the same time a portrait – tantalizing and unique – of a woman who lived by her own rules and left her wisdom to puzzle and delight posterity.

Come Slowly, Eden premiered in 1966 at Theatre De Lys (now the Lucille Lortel Theatre) in New York City with the distinguished and versatile stage actor Kim Hunter as Emily Dickinson. It then toured to Lucille Lortel's White Barn Theatre in Westport, Connecticut and the Coolidge Auditorium of Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. The 1972 the production at Theater Rapport in Los Angeles earned three Drama Critics Awards.

Cast: 2 female, 5 male

What people say:

"It is a touching warm delineation of the moving career of poetess Emily Dickinson. Beautifully written, directed and played…." — Variety

"…an imaginative and touching work…." — New York Newsday

About the Playwright:

Norman Rosten (1913-1995) was an American poet, playwright, and novelist. In a diverse career, he published seven volumes of poetry and four novels. He graduated from Brooklyn College and New York University. From there, he went to the University of Michigan, where he and Arthur Miller were in the same playwriting class. Each won the Avery Hopwood Award, Rosten for his drama and his poetry.