“High Ground” its origin and aspiration.
I wrote this play to make a statement about current issues in an entertaining and non-didactic way. I wanted the central character to be headed for a life that could be full and satisfying only to have it destroyed by violence, crooked politics, and lust. Her spirit to endure and survive emerged in the writing, which kept me writing. This play is based on a real event. My father told me that in 1940 he was the president of the young Republicans at Indiana State University. In the autumn of that year he accompanied the head of the county Republican party to the red-light district in Terre Haute where they registered the prostitutes to vote. The rest of this story is fiction. By showing these conflicts as active in the past I illustrate the length and scope of the continuing struggle to realize Tom Paine’s idea of “the promise of America.”

Sex trafficking, voting rights, powerful families, corrupt politicians? Yes. In a small Midwestern city in 1940? Yes. Ignorance born of privilege, rabid fear of “socialism” allegiance to entrenched power and the status quo? Yes. Does a glimpse of there and then inform us today? Yes. Does poetry have power? Yes. Does Tom Paine’s “promise of America” have any hope of being realized? Yes, if a bright, good hearted, and spunky young woman can overcome a desperate situation and a criminal past.