FRANK: Louis, Lloyd’s a better draftsman than both of us.
SULLIVAN: So you’ve said.
LLOYD (Sketching): Thank you.
(Sullivan looks at what Frank is drawing.)
SULLIVAN: Your house in the desert?
(Frank nods.)
FRANK (Looking at the ground plan he has just been drawing): Living room. With fireplace. Hallway. To the kitchen. (Then imagines) There’s the kettle. The family around the table, waiting for their tea.
(Suddenly pleased with himself, he begins to whistle “I Am the Very Model of a Modern Major-General.” Sullivan and Lloyd join in as they continue to sketch. All is quite jolly.)
(Sketching) Louis, I came out here to start again. Now—I’m going back. How did that happen?
(Frank stops, as if a cloud has crossed him. Sullivan notices this.)
SULLIVAN: Draw. Keep drawing.
(They draw.)
END OF PLAY
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Frank’s Home is based upon a real incident in the life of Frank Lloyd Wright. I have attempted to stay true to the known facts, though I have consciously transgressed in two ways: Louis Sullivan was not in Los Angeles with Wright during this time (though his relationship with Wright is similar to as portrayed), and it took approximately ten days, not one, before Wright learned that his hotel had not collapsed. The following books proved especially helpful in researching the play: Meryle Secrest’s Frank Lloyd Wright; Brendan Gill’s Many Masks; Ada Louise Huxtable’s Frank Lloyd Wright; Edgar Tafel’s About Wright; Kathryn Smith’s Frank Lloyd Wright: Hollyhock House and Olive Hill; Peter Blake’s Frank Lloyd Wright; John Lloyd Wright’s My Father Who Is on Earth; Frank Lloyd Wright’s An Autobiography; Willard Connely’s Louis Sullivan; Robert Twombly’s Louis Sullivan, His Life & Work; J M Richards’s An Introduction to Modern Architecture. Frank’s speech in Scene 3, about building the Millard House in South Pasadena, is based upon a chapter from Wright’s An Autobiography.
RICHARD NELSON’S plays include Farewell to the Theatre, Nikolai and the Others, Sweet and Sad, That Hopey Changey Thing, Conversations in Tusculum, How Shakespeare Won the West, Rodney’s Wife, Franny’s Way, Madame Melville, Goodnight Children Everywhere, The General from America, New England, Misha’s Party (with Alexander Gelman), Columbus and the Discovery of Japan, Two Shakespearean Actors, Some Americans Abroad, Left, Life Sentences, Principia Scriptoriae, Between East and West and The Vienna Notes. His adaptations/translations include Tynan (with Colin Chambers based upon The Diaries of Kenneth Tynan); Jean-Claude Carriere’s The Controversy; Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People and The Wild Duck; Molnar’s The Guardsman; Strindberg’s Miss Julie and The Father; Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard, Three Sisters, The Seagull and The Wood Demon; Pirandello’s Enrico IV; Fo’s Accidental Death of an Anarchist; Goldoni’s Il Campiello; Beaumarchais’s The Marriage of Figaro and Molière’s Don Juan. He has written the musicals Unfinished Piece for a Player Piano (with Peter Golub), Paradise Found (with Ellen Fitzhugh and Jonathan Tunick), James Joyce’s The Dead (with Shaun Davey), My Life with Albertine (with Ricky Ian Gordon), Chess (with Tim Rice, Benny Andersson, Björn Ulvaeus); the screenplays for the films Hyde Park-on-Hudson (Roger Michell, director) and Ethan Frome (John Madden, director); numerous radio plays for the BBC; and the book Making Plays (with David Jones).
He has received numerous awards both in America and abroad, including a Tony Award (Best Book of a Musical for James Joyce’s The Dead) and an Olivier Award (Best Play for Goodnight Children Everywhere); Tony nominations (Best Play for Two Shakespearean Actors; Best Score [as co-lyricist] for James Joyce’s The Dead); an Olivier nomination (Best Comedy for Some Americans Abroad); two Obies; a Lortel Award; a New York Drama Critics Circle Award; a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Writers Award. He is the recipient of the PEN/Laura Pels Master Playwright Award, an Academy Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and he is an Honorary Associate Artist of the Royal Shakespeare Company. He lives in upstate New York.
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