Driving Miss Daisy (play)
| Driving Miss Daisy | |
|---|---|
| Written by | Alfred Uhry |
| Characters |
|
| Date premiered | 1987 |
| Place premiered |
Playwrights Horizons New York City |
| Original language | English |
| Series |
Atlanta Trilogy:
|
| Genre | Drama |
Driving Miss Daisy is a play by American playwright Alfred Uhry, about the relationship of an elderly white Southern Jewish woman, Daisy Werthan, and her African-American chauffeur, Hoke Colburn, from 1948 to 1973. The play was the first in Uhry's Atlanta Trilogy, which deals with white Jewish residents of that city in the early 20th century. The play won the 1988 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.
The time: 1948, the place: Atlanta, Georgia. A crash is heard, and Daisy Werthan, age 72, is in her living room, with her son Boolie, age 40. They are Jewish, with Atlanta accents. She has crashed her car, and Boolie insists that she have a driver. Boolie is in his office and interviews Hoke Coleburn who is a black man of around 60. He is unemployed. Over the next 25 years Hoke drives "Miss Daisy". They are initially wary of each other, and Hoke puts up with the somewhat crotchety Miss Daisy with dignity. She teaches Hoke to read, having been a teacher. Ultimately, they form a friendly bond, with Miss Daisy inviting Hoke to accompany her to a dinner for Martin Luther King, Jr.
Hoke visits Miss Daisy, now age 97, in a nursing home, seeing her for one final time.
The play was inspired by Alfred Uhry's grandmother, Lena Fox, her chauffeur, Will Coleman, and his father. His grandmother, a Jewish woman who lived in Atlanta during the 1960s, had to give up driving after a car accident, and hired Coleman, who drove her for 25 years.
Uhry wrote his Atlanta Trilogy based on his own experiences living in Atlanta as a Jew. He set his three plays at "historic moments in the city’s twentieth century—the 1915 lynching of Leo Frank, the 1939 Gone With the Wind premiere, the 1958 Temple bombing, and the city’s 1964 dinner honoring Martin Luther King’s Nobel Peace Prize." The plays are Driving Miss Daisy, The Last Night of Ballyhoo, and Parade.
Off-Broadway (1987–1990) The original Off-Broadway production was staged at Playwrights Horizons Studio Theatre on 42nd Street, opening on April 15, 1987. Directed by Ron Lagomarsino, the role of Daisy was also played by Rochelle Oliver and Frances Sternhagen, replacing Dana Ivey. It later transferred to the John Houseman Theatre, closing on June 3, 1990, with 1,195 performances.
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