The Kentucky Cycle

The Kentucky Cycle is a sequence of nine plays by American playwright Robert Schenkkan. First produced in 1991, this series of one-acts captures various moments in American history, as told through the experiences of three families in the Cumberland Plateau of the Appalachian Mountains. Epic in scope and storytelling, the plays explore timeless themes of family, home, identity, vengeance, and power. Schenkkan received the 1992 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for The Kentucky Cycle. Content Warning: The source material includes scenes of rape and other forms of violence.

Schenkkan separates the plays into two parts, the first of which contains five one-acts. Masters of the Trade takes place in 1775, where Michael Rowen, an Irish immigrant to eastern Kentucky, loses his family in a Cherokee attack. Though he exhibits little sorrow over the loss of his wife and child, he sets in action a plan of bloody revenge. He finds the man, Tod, who sold the Cherokee the guns they used in the attack, and his friend Sam kills Tod. Michael then presents himself as a trader to the Cherokee warriors. The Cherokee reluctantly agree to trade with Michael, and he gives them smallpox-infested blankets, which will decimate the tribe.

The Courtship of Morning Star is set the following year. Michael marries one of the few survivors of the smallpox epidemic, a beautiful Cherokee girl named Morning Star. He rapes, tortures, and brutalizes her, then forces her to have his children. Michael wants a son; if they have a daughter, Michael says that he will abandon the baby daughter outdoors, leaving her to the crows. Once Morning Star gives birth to a son, she understands that the baby is hers; they are one. Though she once loathed the baby growing within her for its connection to Michael—the baby’s father and Morning Star’s enemy—her fears dissolve as she contemplates raising her son to kill Michael in revenge.

In The Homecoming, set in 1792, Michael's son Patrick is in love with Rebecca Talbert, the daughter of their neighboring farmer, Joe. Joe does not support their relationship. Morning Star tells Patrick that because Michael hates and fears him, he will never want to share the land with Patrick; the only way Patrick will inherit the land is if Michael dies. Patrick ends up killing both Michael and Joe, much to Morning Star's heartbreak; she had long been in love with Joe. Patrick insists on marrying Rebecca, and his actions trigger a bitter, centuries-long feud between the Rowens and the Talberts.

Ties That Bind takes place in 1819. After Rebecca dies in childbirth, Patrick is left to raise his two sons. Broke and facing bankruptcy, Patrick is on the brink of losing his beloved farm. An unknown man holds all the loans Patrick has taken out on his property, and this man essentially forces Patrick to become a sharecropper on his own land. Jeremiah Talbert and Morning Star—both fueled by revenge—are responsible for Patrick's destruction. Patrick's son, Zach, leaves the family, while Patrick continues stoking his recriminations.

God's Great Supper occurs in 1861. The Rowens' feud with the Talberts continues unabated. Patrick is now a decrepit old man, and his son Zeke and grandson Jed carry the torch of his anger and his thirst for retribution. Jed ingratiates himself with the youngest Talbert brothers, Randall and Richard. He joins up with Richard's Civil War regiment and fights alongside him—before pushing him to his death off the side of a boat. Jed then returns home. Jed, Zeke, and a small group of men attack the Talberts. Zeke kills Randall. The men level the Talbert home, and Jed buries Randall.

The second part of The Kentucky Cycle opens with Tall Tales. Set in 1885, it centers on middle-aged Jed and the loss of the land he fought so brutally to claim as his own. With the advent of the coal industry, a smooth-talking storyteller named JT Wells convinces Jed to sell his land for $1 an acre to the local coal-mining concern. While Jed's wife, Lallie, and daughter, Mary Anne, also buy into JT's hollow promises, Tommy Jackson, a young man in love with Mary Anne, does not. When Tommy sees JT and Mary Anne kissing, he attacks JT. Mary Anne defends JT, who then beats Tommy unconscious. Feeling guilty that he coerced Jed into selling millions of dollars of land for less than $400, JT confesses to Mary Anne that he works on behalf of the mining company to swindle the Rowens out of their land. Mary Anne tells her father what JT did, but her father doesn’t believe her. Though Mary Anne could destroy the contract, she refuses, and the mining company takes over their land.

Fire in the Hole, which unfolds in 1920, documents the destruction of rural Appalachia by the coal industry. Mary Anne and Tommy are now married, and their only remaining son, Joshua, is severely ill with a fever. A union organizer named Abe Steinman tries to get Mary Anne and Tommy to rise up against the oppressive conditions forced on them by their employers. Mary Anne wants to unionize, but Tommy, at the last minute, reveals the plans to his boss at the mine. The boss kills Abe. Mary Anne denounces Tommy, and the miners drag him away. Mary Anne forges ahead and forms the union.

Which Side Are You On? finds Joshua, in 1954, the head of that union. Joshua's political maneuvering is at odds with the idealism of his son, Scotty. Meanwhile, Joshua stays silent on mine safety violations because the owner of the mining company, James Talbert Winston, threatens to close the entire operation down if the union makes any more demands. This uneasy alliance results in lackluster safety standards and a subsequent accident at the mine, which kills Scotty. Joshua, in keeping with James's version of the story while absolving himself of responsibility, agrees that it was a tragic accident—not something that Joshua could have prevented by speaking up.

The last play in the series, The War on Poverty, takes place in 1975. Joshua, James, and Franklin Biggs, descendant of Sallie Biggs (the enslaved person whom Michael Rowen brings home with him in The Homecoming), walk the land of the old Rowen homestead. There they find the remains of a long-dead baby girl, the daughter whom Michael killed out of his blind-desire for a son. Joshua reburies the remains and feels a sudden renewed connection to the land. The people from generations past rise up from the land, and a wolf howls. Joshua, rejoicing, shouts at the wolf, encouraging it to run.