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The word "provenance" denotes more than just "chain of custody"; it is a litany of stories, histories, sorrows, happinesses, and fortunes, both good and bad. Every object has a narrative that most of us will never know. Whose hands touched it last? How did it come into their possession? What circumstances led them to part with it?

I have always been captivated by the histories of old things, from the mundane to the extraordinary. Whether it be a Westinghouse tube-powered radio, a wax cylinder left over from the days of Edison, a timeworn magazine having outlived its forgotten publisher, or an 18th century French game table from the Louis XV period, I love imagining the lives of the people who owned them before me.

Consider also the craftspeople and workers who produced these objets d'art. They had friends and families and hopes and dreams, the same as everyone. Indeed, there existed a time on our shared planet when a creator, a builder, a carpenter, someone’s mother or father, breathed life into an item that we now hail as our own. Their identities swirl imperceptibly in a dust cloud at the end of life's road, but the product of their toil survives through countless generations.

We connect to them in the here-and-now, as we sweep our contemporary fingers over the same vintage surfaces they touched, the same molecules, whispering across time and space for eternity. When an antique of unknown origin makes its way into my hands, I concoct a backstory -- dramatic, poignant, often funny -- like the ones I include in this play.

Long after my final breath, the object continues its journey, passed from hand to hand to hand, manifesting a hundred years hence into the custody of a new pair of eyes, whose speculative gaze looks back and wonders who I might have been.

As Maureen notes in the play, "No one really owns anything."

-- BLM

Olive Branch Theatricals | Curtain Call Performing Arts | The MAIN

City of Santa Clarita | Jeff Barber | Vicki Edwards | Susan Fletcher

Musette Caing Hart | Tim Hart | Nancy Lantis | Phil Lantis

David Stears | Renee Metherel | Linda Dwyer | Marlowe Weisman

Listen to the "Chess Master" scene from Provenance, available

as a dramatic audio podcast produced by Open Door Playhouse, premiering September 18, 2024 on OpenDoorPlayhouse.org

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