Wellfleet Preservation Hall
HENRY BESTON (1888-1968), is the author and naturalist, best known for The Outermost House (1928); husband of Elizabeth Coatsworth (m. 1929) and father of Kate Beston Barnes. ELIZABETH COATSWORTH (1893-1986), was a writer of fiction and poetry for children and adults. KATE BESTON BARNES (1932-2013), Maine’s first Poet Laureate, daughter of Henry Beston and Elizabeth Coatsworth.
This script is compiled and arranged from primary and secondary sources listed on the back of this program. It incorporates passages from Henry Beston’s enduring work of nature writing, The Outermost House, and a few of his other works. The Outermost House, published in 1928, recounts a year Beston spent living in and observing nature in a dune shack on the Great Beach of Cape Cod in Eastham; it has been cited as an inspiration for the creation of the National Seashore. Juxtaposed with these passages by Beston are the points of view of his wife Elizabeth Coatsworth and their daughter Kate Beston Barnes on the disparate writing methods of Beston and Coatsworth. Barnes’ words are from her poems and interviews about her parents and provide her perspective on her parents and their marriage.
ACTOR PLAYWRIGHT JOHN DENNIS ANDERSON, is a native Texan living on Cape Cod, is a
performance studies scholar and Professor Emeritus in the Dept. of Communication Studies at Emerson College, where he taught for 27 years. His play Isherwood was part of the first year’s Truro Playwright Collective reading series, and his play A Cultivated Friendship, co-authored with Karen Vuranch, was part of last year’s. He is a member of the board of the Open University of Wellfleet and a trustee of the Helltown Players.
In this production of BESTON, John Dennis Anderson plays Henry Beston. John has acted at the Provincetown Theater in Casa Valentina, The Laramie Project, and You Can’t Take It With You. In Chautauqua performances, he portrays writers that include Henry James, William Faulkner, Robert Frost, Ernest Hemingway, Washington Irving—and Henry Beston (presented for Ashland Chautauqua in Ohio in 2018).
KAREN McPHERSON (Elizabeth Coatsworth) washed ashore to Chatham in 1996 and has been living the dream ever since, working at many of the MANY theatres on Cape Cod. In the last year she played Jacob Marley in A Christmas Carol at Harwich Junior Theatre, and earlier in the year was Marilyn in Ripcord at Barnstable Comedy Club. She has played Daisy Werthan in Driving Miss Daisy several times at the Academy of Performing Arts, Cotuit Center for the Arts,
and the Barnstable Comedy Club. She has MANY favorite roles and performances in the last 29 years!
LAURA SCRIBNER (Kate Beston Barnes) is a washashore from New York City, recently seen at the Provincetown Theater in Almost Maine, Angels in America, Part 1 Millennium Approaches, Casa Valentina, The Humans, and The Lady Hamlet. Television credits include all the Law & Orders, All My Children, One Life to Live, As The World Turns, and Guiding Light. When not at the theater Laura is a Realtor with Gibson Sotheby's International Realty in Provincetown.
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