Caroline, or Change

Tony Kushner, Jeanine Tesori

• Publisher: Theatre Communications Group
• Year: 2004
• Print ISBN: 9781559362481
• eBook ISBN: 9781559366052
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: American Drama
• Index: Literature

“Caroline is a breakthrough—a story so grounded in the ordinary details of life that it almost seems to have discovered a new genre.” –Richard Zoglin, Time

“Acute, smart and witty: a telling snapshot focusing with sharp clarity on characters captured at a fraught turning point in history—a culture’s and a family’s.” –Charles Isherwood, Variety

“Thrilling. You’ve never seen anything quite like Caroline, or Change and likely won’t again anytime soon. There’s never a moment that the part-pop, part-opera, part-musical-theater score Jeanine Tesori has conjured up doesn’t ideally match Tony Kushner’s meticulously chosen words with clarion precision.” –Matthew Murray, talkinbroadway.com

“A monumental achievement in American musical theater. Joyful, wholly successful, immensely moving, told with abundant wit and generosity of heart.” –John Helipern, New York Observer


Louisiana, 1963: A nation reeling from the burgeoning Civil Rights Movement and the Kennedy assassination. Caroline, a black maid, and Noah, the son of the Jewish family she works for, struggle to find an identity for their friendship after Noah's stepmother, unable to give Caroline a raise, tells Caroline that she may keep the money Noah leaves in his pockets. Through their intimate story, this beautiful musical portrays the changing rhythms of a nation. Tony Kushner and composer Jeanine Tesori have created a story that addresses contemporary questions of culture, community, race and class through the lens and musical pulse of the 1960s.

1.

WASHER/DRYER

Caroline, a maid, in the basement of the Gellmans’ house. She’s doing the laundry, sorting the clothes.

CAROLINE

Nothing ever happen under ground
in Louisiana
cause they ain’t no under ground
in Louisiana.
There is only
under water.

(Caroline opens the lid of the Washing Machine, and begins to load it with clothes.)

THE WASHING MACHINE

Consequences unforeseen.
Consequences unforeseen.
Put your faith and clothes in me,
a brand-new Nineteen-Sixty-Three
seven-cycle wash machine.

dp n="30" folio="12" ?

(Caroline switches the Washing Machine on.)

CAROLINE

Sixteen feet below sea level!
Torn tween the Devil
and the muddy brown sea.
Sixteen soggy feet below
the Gulf of Mexico.

(She switches on the Radio.)

THE RADIO (a trio of women)

Tough and dreary and all disshevel,
sixteen feet below sea level.
Baby,
gonna drown.
All day long
you wear a frown.
Dressed in white and
feelin low,
talkin to washer and the
radio!
Doin laundry, full of woe,
neath the Gulf of Mexico.
Sixteen feet
sixteen feet
sixteen feet beneath the sea!
Sixteen feet
sixteen feet
sixteen feet beneath the—

CAROLINE

Nothing happens under ground
in Louisiana. Cept in this house,
cept here, cept here:
At nine-thirteen Saint Anthony Street
in Lake Charles Louisiana:
This house got
a basement.

THE WASHING MACHINE

This house got
a basement.
True.
No other house round here gots one.
This one
this one
this one
do.

CAROLINE

Ain’t very deep for a basement but still
it planted in the swampy soil,
sunk in the mud and the marsh and the mire,
down with the snakes and the snails and the bracken,
root to the bayou,
root to the ooze . . .

THE RADIO

. . . singing them sediment topsoil blues,
alluvial delta-silt saltwater ooze.

THE WASHING MACHINE

Hum hum hum hum
round and round I agitates
while them what does the clothes awaits,
they contemplates and speculates,
in the peace my one-horsepower
lectric motor’s hum creates:

THE RADIO AND THE WASHING MACHINE

What shall be? What lies in store
in Nineteen-Sixty-Three? or -Four?
(Noah, a little boy, stands at the entrance to the basement.)

NOAH

Every day she stands between
the radio and the washing machine:
Caroline, our maid.
All day long I’ve been gone
at school. When I get home, they’re on!
Washing machine and radio!
Down the basement steps I go!
Caroline our maid!
Caroline our maid!
Caroline! Caroline! Caroline
the President of the United States!
Caroline who’s always mad,
Caroline who runs everything,
Caroline who’s stronger than my dad.
In our basement, where she’ll let
me light her daily cigarette.

(Caroline hands Noah one cigarette and a book of matches.)

CAROLINE

Light me up.

(Noah puts the cigarette in his mouth and lights it.)

CAROLINE

(Severely:)
Don’t suck in!

(She takes the cigarette from him.)

CAROLINE

Shouldn’t let you do that. Boy
when you grow up don’t smoke these things.

NOAH

Blow me smoke rings, smoke rings smoke rings!

CAROLINE

Not today, I got to work.

NOAH

Caroline never tells me so but
I know Daddy mustn’t know.
A secret her and me can share:
Our daily cigarette . . .

CAROLINE

Now muse yourself,
I got no use for you.
This basement too darn hot for two.

(Noah leaves.)

THE WASHING MACHINE

Hum hum hum hum.
Smoke you daily cigarette.

CAROLINE

Only ever smoke but one.

(A timer bell rings!)

THE WASHING MACHINE

Washin finish! Sweet and wet!
And cool! My daily task is done!

THE RADIO

Time’s come to perspire!
Turn on the electric dryer!
Sucking moisture out the air,
melt the hairspray in your hair!
Turn it on, turn on despair!

THE DRYER

Caroline! Caroline!
Crank my little timer be...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Praise
• Dedication
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• PRODUCTION HISTORY
• CAST
• 1. - WASHER/DRYER
• 2. - CABBAGE
• 3. - LONG DISTANCE
• 4. - MOON CHANGE
• 5. - DUETS
• 6. - THE BLEACH CUP
• 7. - IRONING
• 8. - THE CHANUKAH PARTY
• 9. - THE TWENTY DOLLAR BILL
• 10. - AFTERMATH
• 11. - LOT’S WIFE
• 12 - HOW LONG HAS THIS BEEN GOING ON?
• EPILOGUE
• Copyright Page