Center Stage Brings a Trio of Capote Short Stories to Life

It’s a tale as familiar — and old — as time itself. A creative, intelligent soul discovers at a very young age that he (or she) has been born into the wrong time, place or set of circumstances.

These are the people who experience life’s difficulties early on, realizing quickly and always painfully that they don’t belong. They are not an accepted part of the family structure, whether within a household, a community or society itself.

While this may be true for many of us who fled small town America for places that felt more like a real home, it was definitely true for Truman Capote, the legendary writer who hailed from rural Alabama and came to find himself and his people in New York City, where he lived a life of fame and fortune until he wore out his welcome.

The themes of inclusion and the desire for love run through much of Capote’s works, especially his short stories that recall his youth. Three of his short stories that focus on the holidays will be presented in the coming weeks at Southampton Arts Center as staged readings performed by the actors of Center Stage under direction of the company’s founder, Michael Disher. From November 15 to November 17, the troupe will present Capote’s “The Thanksgiving Visitor,” followed on November 29 to December 1, by “One Christmas” and “A Christmas Memory.”

“As I get older, I just want to do good pieces,” Disher explained. “I’m drawn more and more to good writing and good writers, so knowing that I’m kind of known for doing holiday shows, I wanted something different.

“Holiday shows have a great ability to touch people and these will in the right way,” he added. “They will also remind them, we can go through life and suffer sufficiently and plenty, but life’s gifts that fall in our direction are not always wrapped up in bows. Some are so moving and live in us and are also so simple.”

This series of staged readings of Capote’s work is highly unusual in that it is being presented through special arrangements and permission granted by The Truman Capote Literary Trust. It took Disher a year of effort, cultivation and negotiation to develop a strong relationship with the trust and get the approval.

“I couldn’t add or delete anything or alter one word,” Disher said. “As long as it fit in the context of the prose, I could break up voices, use sound effects and incidental music and projections are OK.

“I call these Long Island premieres,” he added. “I know others have done this before, but not legally. That’s why every single piece I put out is sanctioned by the literary trust. It’s been quite a journey, but with great reward.”

A Center Stage cast of 11 will read the words of the various characters in the three stories, all of which take place in the early 1930s, during some of the most difficult years of the Depression, especially for people in the rural South.

“In the Depression era, every deficit was magnified, but everything they had was also magnified,” Disher said. “People took nothing for granted. Just having a little bit was considered advantageous.”

For Capote, his troubled home life as a child compounded those Depression era difficulties.

“His parents were divorced, neither wanted Truman,” Disher explained. ‘They kicked him out and sent him to Munroeville, Alabama, to live with three spinster cousins and one older male cousin who just wanted him to be a man. They were in their 60s, he was 6, 7, 8 years old and very effeminate.”

The character of Buddy, representing a young Capote, appears in all three of the biographical holiday stories, as does Sook, the favorite of his spinster cousins and a constant companion.

“‘The Thanksgiving Visitor’ is about the bully Odd Henderson who tortures Truman in first and second grade,” Disher said. “He’s a Depression era kid who has nothing and he looks at Truman as a threat. It’s Sook who tries to convince him that you can’t hate what you don’t know. The only way to get to know him is to invite him to Thanksgiving dinner. So he does and it goes from there and Buddy learns a great deal about honesty.”

In “One Christmas,” Disher notes that Buddy learns about regret and restitution for his actions as he spends the holiday away from his family by traveling to visit his rarely seen father.

“Truman didn’t know him at all, the father demanded he spend this one Christmas with him,” Disher explained. “He lived in New Orleans, it was like going to a foreign country, from a little town in Alabama to the French Quarter. Here’s a man whose existence was night life and older sophisticated women. He was married six times, but he hungers for his child’s love.

“After he leaves his father and goes home and talks to Sook, she explains to him that Santa Claus is everywhere and no one person could do as much as he has to in a single evening. The next day, Truman goes to the post office and gets a postcard and sends it to his father. When his father dies, it’s one of the very few things in his safe deposit box.

“It’s heartbreaking and tender, but so touching, that’s the undercurrent,” he said. “That bitterness with Truman wove itself beautifully into the Southern Gothic genre.”

The final story of the staged reading series, “A Christmas Memory,” is one that many people might remember from their youth as it was once required reading in classrooms.

“A Christmas Memory” is Capote’s love letter to the elderly Sook, who raised him and taught him much about kindness, sharing and forever,” Disher said. “He learns so much about the definition of forever and how it’s not always attached to the bodily form. Sometimes what is within the heart stays with you forever.”

Disher finds that the 1930s setting further amplifies the messages in the stories, illustrating that, despite the struggles experienced by the poorest of the poor during the worst years of the Depression, often there were examples of generosity that go right to the heart of the holiday season.

“In ‘A Christmas Memory,’ the fruitcake becomes such a wonderful centerpiece because it’s such an extravagance,” Disher said. “Here’s a woman who bakes them and sends them to random people.

“There was an appreciation of family and one another,” he added. “I always thought one of the greatest scenes from ‘Grapes of Wrath’ was at the end when Rose of Sharon who lost everything, including her child, goes to a dying man and the only thing she has to give him is her breast milk.”

Late in life, Truman Capote called the East End home. Shortly after Disher moved to the area in 1982, he recalled that Capote arrived with his partner, Jack Dunphy, and the couple bought a home in Sagaponack. The region was rife with literary figures at the time.

“There was so much color out here and literary history. They lived here, they didn’t just reside here,” Disher said of the writers of the era. “I think that’s an interesting part of this area that not a lot of people know about, especially in the ’70s or ’80s.”

Before long, Capote became a regular fixture at Bobby Van’s in Bridgehampton and Disher encountered him in the hamlet on more than one occasion as Capote had a reputation for stumbling out of the establishment after having too much to drink.

“His infamy extended from Manhattan to Sagaponack,” Disher said. “I hope people find this production as fascinating as he was. He was a dynamic person.”

But he was obviously one with a lot of demons. So is that what’s required of a good writer? To have some torment to tap into from his past?

“I don’t know if it’s a requirement,” Disher said. “But it sure as hell doesn’t hurt.”

Center Stage at Southampton Arts Center will present “The Thanksgiving Visitor” on Friday, November 15, at 7 p.m., Saturday, November 16, at 2 and 7 p.m. and Sunday, November 17, at 2 p.m. Performances of “One Christmas” and “A Christmas Memory” will be Friday, November 29, at 2 p.m. (before the Southampton Village Christmas Parade), Saturday, November 30, at 2 and 7 p.m., and Sunday, December 1, at 2 p.m. The cast includes Patrick Abillama, Daniel Becker, Susan Cincotta, Rori Finazzo, Tom Gregory, Vincenzo Harty, Franco Pistritto, Jack Seabury, Michaal Lyn Schepps, Richard Schindler and Mary Sabo Scopinich.

Tickets are $20 ($15 for SAC members). Southampton Arts Center is located at 25 Jobs Lane in Southampton. For more information, visit southamptonartscenter.org.