Tusk Tusk Tusk.(COLUMBIA, S.C.)(George Brant's play called Elephant's Graveyard)(Brief article)

Her death could be interpreted as a warning, and the troubling, resonant play that George Brant wrote-Elephant's Graveyard, the true story of a circus elephant named Mary who killed a handler and was hanged (all five cons of her) from a railroad derrick--might be read as a folksy screed against animal abuse, because of its choral aspects (15 characters, including a drummer and a guitarist), it could be seen as an imaginative portrait of how the panicked circus types and angry townsfolk of East Tennessee, circa 1916, reacted after the execution. Still, Brant insists he's "not exposing" small-town Appalachian life." This could happen anywhere," he says.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Garlanded with a David Mark Cohen National Playwriting Award from the Kennedy Center, best new play citation from the Austin Critics' Table, a Playwrights' Center workshop and a Keene Prize for Literature, Elephants Graveyard digs up lyrical bones from the ruins of unverifiable facts, sensationalistic articles and apocryphal stories. (You'll need to track down someone with an elephant's memory to know why Mary went into a rage, snatched a trainer with her trunk, threw him against a drink stand and stepped on his head, like a melon.)

Brant does concede that Elephant's Graveyard, which premieres May 1-23 at Trust us Theatre in Columbia, S.C., contains timely currents of frustration and anger. "After Mary's death, people didn't recognize the country anymore, or our place in it. There's the feeling that somehow we're locked in. The play's got political overtones." Is it significant to mention that Mary's death also took place on a Sept. 11? "I don't like to weigh in heavily on the meaning of the play," Brant replies. "I'm not a particular proponent of capital punishment in general, but to kill an animal seems to move to the cruel and unusual side of things. Some people who've seen the play say that they saw Bernie Madoff in the elephant."

Tusk Tusk Tusk.(COLUMBIA, S.C.)(George Brant's play called Elephant's Graveyard)(Brief article)

Her death could be interpreted as a warning, and the troubling, resonant play that George Brant wrote-Elephant's Graveyard, the true story of a circus elephant named Mary who killed a handler and was hanged (all five cons of her) from a railroad derrick--might be read as a folksy screed against animal abuse, because of its choral aspects (15 characters, including a drummer and a guitarist), it could be seen as an imaginative portrait of how the panicked circus types and angry townsfolk of East Tennessee, circa 1916, reacted after the execution. Still, Brant insists he's "not exposing" small-town Appalachian life." This could happen anywhere," he says.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Garlanded with a David Mark Cohen National Playwriting Award from the Kennedy Center, best new play citation from the Austin Critics' Table, a Playwrights' Center workshop and a Keene Prize for Literature, Elephants Graveyard digs up lyrical bones from the ruins of unverifiable facts, sensationalistic articles and apocryphal stories. (You'll need to track down someone with an elephant's memory to know why Mary went into a rage, snatched a trainer with her trunk, threw him against a drink stand and stepped on his head, like a melon.)

Brant does concede that Elephant's Graveyard, which premieres May 1-23 at Trust us Theatre in Columbia, S.C., contains timely currents of frustration and anger. "After Mary's death, people didn't recognize the country anymore, or our place in it. There's the feeling that somehow we're locked in. The play's got political overtones." Is it significant to mention that Mary's death also took place on a Sept. 11? "I don't like to weigh in heavily on the meaning of the play," Brant replies. "I'm not a particular proponent of capital punishment in general, but to kill an animal seems to move to the cruel and unusual side of things. Some people who've seen the play say that they saw Bernie Madoff in the elephant."