Programs from Duende:Drama & Literature

Schools	General
Duende offers a menu of plays that bring to life important moments in history, showing common people rising to make difficult moral decisions. These plays are each about forty-five minutes long, are coordinated with the curriculum, and come complete with study guides.	Duende offers a menu of plays and dramatic readings for family and adult audiences. Some can be presented at museums, campfires, etc. Others require a theater with light and sound equipment. Some are under an hour in length. Others are full-length.
The Starry Messenger Friendly Fire The Great Blight Gunpowder Man Seabiscuit The Betsy Ross of the Bears Sacramento 2009	The Starry Messenger Friendly Fire The Great Blight Dust Storm Gunpowder Man Inventing the West On Fire! Seabiscuit The Betsy Ross of the Bears Vivien Playwrights Collective California History Theater 2002
• The Starry Messenger < details page A Tale of the Father of Modern Science Tells Galileo's story in the form of a play for two actors. They portray Galileo and his daughter (who became a nun and took the name Sister Maria Celeste) as well as many other colorful figures of the day.
• Friendly Fire < details page A Forty-niner's Life With the Me-Wuk People Tells the story of the native people of the Mother Lode during the Gold Rush in a way that is at once entertaining, dramatic, engaging, adventurous, humorous, and historically accurate.
• The Great Blight < details page Tells the story of the terrible intolerance that turned the failure of a single crop into the national catastrophe known as the Irish Potato Famine. It was blamed on a fungus which blighted and destroyed the Irish potato crop, but that was the lesser cause.

• Gunpowder Man < details page Tells the story of Chinese people who fled the catastrophic end of the Taiping Rebellion, helped build the transcontinental railroad, settled in the US, and endured the racist reactions of the 1880s.
• Dust Storm < details page Art and Survival in a Time of Paranoia Tells a story of the internment of Japanese Americans during the second world war, using the art of Chiura Obata.
• Seabiscuit < details page The Horse that Became America's Hero Tells the story of the legendary Thoroughbred that lifted America’s spirits during the worst years of the Great Depression.
• The Betsy Ross of the Bears < details page Tells the story of California pioneer Nancy Kelsey. She was the first U.S. woman to cross the Sierra Nevada. With her husband Ben she played an active role in the final years of Mexican California and provided the material from which the famous Bear Flag was made.

• Inventing the West < details page The Dangerous Friendship of Mark Twain and Bret Harte Tells the story of the two famous writers, one of whom is now regarded as an American Classic and the other relegated to the margins.
• On Fire! < details page Conflict and Conflagration in the Wildlands Explores the gritty heroics, the tragedies, and the triumphs of America's wildland fire fighters. And it portrays the equally dramatic battles in the corridors of power — the wars to determine how the wildlands will be managed.
• Vivien < details page The Triumph and Madness of Vivien Leigh Tells the story of the great film actor Vivien Leigh. She and Laurence Olivier had one of the most romantic celebrity marriages of their time. And one of the most troubled.
To Schedule a Program, see Booking.