| Betty | Helen Coburn |
| Lloyd | Frank Burk |
| Elly | Stella Adler |
| Butch | Grover Burgess |
| Sheriff | Louis V. Quince |
| Plank | John S. Clarke, Jr. |
| Joe | Francis Fergusson |
| Miss Meredith | Frances Williams |
| Bud Bickel | Sam Hartman |
| The Davis Boy | Harold Hecht |
Country School Boys and Girls
Messrs. Kradoska, Hayes, Parsons, Fielding,
Williams, Curtis.
Misses Schmidt, Seymour, Titsworth, Johnson,
Squire, Smith.
Part 1—The Woods
Scene 1—The Woods
Scene 2—The Cabin
Intermission
Part 2—The Lake
Scene 1—A Cleared Place
Scene 2—The Lake
The action takes place in Indian Territory, now Oklahoma, in the
year 1906
Settings designed by Lewis Barrington
Costumes designed by Gertrude Brows
Sets and costumes executed by the Laboratory Theater Workshop
Property Man Morton Brown
The Director and Actors are deeply grateful to Mme. Maria Ouspenskaya for the invaluable assistance she gave in the preparation of this production.
FOREWORD
This play came to us late in the season of 1926-1927. Produced by George Auerbach at the American Laboratory Theater in New York, it attracted some attention during April and May, and survived without serious damage the ordeal of criticism by several of the front-line reviewers. With two or three exceptions, however, the notices showed little understanding of what Mr. Riggs was trying to do.
That is one reason why I am presuming to add these few words to the dramatist’s text. Big Lake is that rarest of things, a poetic drama that is at once poetry and drama. To one of his later plays Mr. Riggs has given the title Sump’n Like Wings, and I can think of no words that so accurately describe what I felt when, over a year ago, I read the manuscript of Big Lake. There is a winged lightness in the words that the poet puts into the mouths of his young people, an ecstasy born of the sheer joy of being alive. How poor a thing is the mere “observation” of a clever playwright beside the deeper, more incisive and highly intuitive scenes in Big Lake!