The Kentucky Cycle is a 1992 series of plays by Robert Schenkkan.
It consists of nine one-act plays that together tell over 200 years of history. The setting is the Appalachians of eastern Kentucky. The plays are organized into two parts.
- Part I: Masters of the Trade, The Courtship of Morning Star, The Homecoming, Ties That Bind, and God's Great Supper. The time frame runs from 1775 to 1861 and dwells on frontier settlers and homesteaders. A man named Michael Bowen, an escaped indentured servant, kills a trader and steals his guns. He kidnaps, rapes, and enslaves a Cherokee woman, Morning Star. Later his son Patrick takes revenge—but more revenge is to come.
- Part II: Tall Tales, Fire in the Hole, Which Side Are You On?, and The War on Poverty. These plays run from 1890 to 1975 and concentrate on the effect of coal mining on the region. The Blue Star Mining Company comes to the area and, through underhanded tactics, buys up the whole valley. They establish a ruthlessly exploitative mining operation. In response, local workers attempt to unionize.
Tropes:
- Amazing Freaking Grace: Naturally, it's "Amazing Grace" that the hillbillies are singing when Jed Bowen gets home, having deserted from the war, and walks right up to his grandfather Patrick's in-progress funeral.
- Asshole Victim: There are sone awful tragedies in these plays, but Michael Bowen—multiple murderer, racist, sociopath—certainly deserves to be stabbed to death.
- Best Served Cold: Jeremiah Talbert's revenge, as he explains explicitly at the end of Ties That Bind. He could have just killed Patrick Bowen for murdering Jeremiah's father and kidnapping and forcibly marrying his sister, but that wouldn't be enough. So he waited 27 years to buy the debt on Patrick's land, taking literally everything Patrick owns and leaving Patrick a sharecropper on what was once his own estate.Jeremiah: So I decided to let you live, but take away everything in your life that meant anything to you, just like you done to me. And now I own you, Rowen—own all of you Rowens.
- Call-Back: In the last play, The War on Poverty, Joshua points out the stump of an oak tree — that was Mary Anne's favorite tree as she tells in Tall Tales. And then they dig up the grave of Morning Star's abandoned daughter, buried by Michael Rowen almost 200 years before.
- Cassandra Truth: At the end of Tall Tales, J.T. Wells has an attack of conscience. He tells Mary Anne Rowen that the mining company is ripping her father Jed off, that the mining rights Jed just sold away for a dollar an acre come with millions of dollars of coal under every one of those acres, that not only has the mining company ripped him off but that they will also destroy the land. He then gives the contract back to her and tells her to tear it up. She then goes back to her father and tells him—and Jed does not believe her. Everything J.T. told her comes true, of course, as the mining company turns the hills into a ruin and the Bowens eventually lose their land.
- Company Town: After the mining company takes over the land they establish one of these. As is usually the case, the mine is the only employer and the workers get only scrip that they can redeem in the company store.
- Cycle of Revenge: This takes up most of Part I. Patrick Bowen murders Joe Talbert and kidnaps his daughter Rebecca into a forced marriage. Jeremiah Talbert then avenges the death of his father by waiting 27 years before foreclosing on Patrick Bowen's land and taking literally everything he owns. Finally, some 70 years after the cycle began, Patrick's grandson Jed Bowen murders both Jeremiah's son Richard Talbert and Jeremiah's grandson Randall, before raping both of Richard's daughters and retaking possession of the land.Jed: When's it ever gonna stop? I'M SICK OF IT!
- Death by Childbirth: Rebecca Bowen dies in the Time Skip between The Homecoming and Ties That Bind, giving birth to Patrick's son Zach. As a consequence Zach winds up regarding their slave Sallie as his mother, and leaves the family, outraged, after Patrick sells her.
- Deliberate Values Dissonance: The N-word is used by white people to describe black people, as of course it would have been in 19th and 20th century Kentucky.
- Dramatic Unmask: Morning Star Rowen sheds her cloak at the end of Ties That Bind, revealing her identity as the person who was behind her son Patrick losing all his land.
- Generational Saga: Three Kentucky families over 200 years of Appalachian history. There's the Feuding Families the Bowens and Talberts, one of whom (the Bowens) was started by an Irish immigrant, and who spend nearly a century fighting over the same valley. After the Bowens wind up losing the valley to a mining company they wind up fighting over unionization. Then there's the Biggs family, which forms the local African-American community and began when Bowen patriarch Michael Bowen raped his slave Sallie.
- Historical Domain Character: William Quantrill. After murdering Richard Talbert, Jed Bowen joins Quantrill's Confederate guerillas.
- I Have No Son!: Mary Anne does this when her husband Tommy Jackson is revealed as the man who betrayed the union. She also takes back her maiden name. (Immediately after, the other miners murder Tommy.)Mary Anne: My name is Rowen. Mary Anne Rowen. I got one son, Joshua Rowen, and this man is a stranger to me.
- Indentured Servitude: Michael Rowen, an Irish immigrant, was an indentured servant. Apparently he released himself from servitude by murdering his master.
- Injun Country: Kentucky was this in the 1770s. The local Cherokee, acutely aware of the danger that whites pose to their way of life, take action by massacring an entire town. Michael Bowen in return deliberately gives them smallpox-infested blankets, which wipes out the tribe.
- Killed Mid-Sentence: A Union colonel says "Why don't you rebels stand up and—", and that is when Jed Bowen's bullet kills him.
- Kneel Before Zod: The end of Ties That Bind has Jeremiah force Patrick Bowen to go to his knees and beg, before allowing Patrick to stay on the land that Jeremiah has just foreclosed on as a sharecropper. He does this because he's not just foreclosing on land: It's Personal.
- Lifesaving Misfortune: Michael Bowen says that he escaped the massacre of his town by the local Cherokee, because his horse threw a shoe, delaying his return home.
- Like Father, Like Son: Patrick Bowen commits all the sins his father Michael committed or was planning to commit. He kidnaps a woman and forces her to marry him, he commits two murders, and he rapes Sallie the slave so he can have more slaves to work his land, which was Michael's plan.
- Match Cut: An audio match cut, as explicitly described in the stage directions.Joshua sits bolt upright in bed and screams. His scream turns into the ear-splitting blast of a steam whistle mounted on the coal tipple.
- Narrator: A narrator is heard at the beginning of each part, establishing the setting.
- Neck Snap: Ezekiel Bowen completes his revenge, and wipes out the Talbert family in the male line, when he snaps young Randall Talbert's neck.
- Never Learned to Read: None of the Kentucky hillbillies can read. That makes it even easier for J.T. Wells, the mining company man who arrives in Tall Tales, to rip them off. He gets ignorant Jed Rowen to sign away his very valuable land for a song.
- Plaguemaster: Michael Bowen gives smallpox-infested blankets to the local Cherokee tribe, with the intent of wiping them out so that they will pose no threat to his taking ownership of the valley. It works.
- Screaming Birth: Morning Star delivers her first child in a scene where a body double is playing her, screaming with the pain, while the main actress playing Morning Star stands in the foreground and tells how smallpox destroyed her tribe.
- "Shut Up!" Gunshot:
- When Judge Goddard's court hearing in Patrick Bowen's parlor—which is eventually revealed to be about Patrick's bankruptcy—is distracted by Patrick and Grey the bailiff telling War of 1812 stories and singing songs, Judge Goddard fires a pistol into the air to get everyone's attention back.
- Silus does this in Fire in the Hole when Tommy and Cassius start brawling, during the tense confrontation the morning after Abe was murdered. This prompts Joshua to out his father as the traitor.
- Stress Vomit: In "The Homecoming", Patrick Bowen vomits, after an angry confrontation with his father Michael leads to Patrick stabbing his father to death.
- Sworn Brothers: Jed Bowen does the Blood Oath variant with little Randall Talbert, pricking both their thumbs with a knife and touching. It is a trick, because Jed is plotting to murder both Randall and his father.
- Villain Protagonist: Michael Bowen, the protagonist of the first couple of plays. He kills a man, employs 18th century germ warfare to exterminate the Cherokee, and kidnaps and rapes one of the few Cherokee to survive.
