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Things of Dry Hours
In Depression-era Alabama, black Sunday school teacher and Communist Party member Tice Hogan lives on the edge of trouble. When a white factory worker on the run demands sanctuary, Tice and his daughter may be pushed over that edge.
“THINGS OF DRY HOURS is a beautiful, brave and devastating play, a profound imaginative delving into radical resistance and hope rising at an impossible moment, in crushingly inhospitable circumstances. No one writes about politics, history and all that’s hidden underneath better than Naomi Wallace. Ferocious, tender, whimsical, tough, brutally direct, poetically elusive, her voice is utterly unique and essential. I’m grateful, as always, for her unsparing, painful, sexy stirring up of our human selves.” —Tony Kushner
“Naomi Wallace’s gorgeously written and philosophically rich celebration of a black Communist agitator in the Depression-era South … Wallace weaves together these proud, lonely souls with language rich in metaphor and, at times, as hard and piercing as a handful of nails.” —Time Out New York
“Naomi Wallace’s fierce new play tackles the plight of black communists in America … Naomi Wallace is a dangerous woman … not only in her writing … but also in her personal stand against what she sees as injustice and the peeling away of democratic rights.” —The Guardian (U K)
“THINGS OF DRY HOURS is a beautiful, brave and devastating play, a profound imaginative delving into radical resistance and hope rising at an impossible moment, in crushingly inhospitable circumstances. No one writes about politics, history and all that’s hidden underneath better than Naomi Wallace. Ferocious, tender, whimsical, tough, brutally direct, poetically elusive, her voice is utterly unique and essential. I’m grateful, as always, for her unsparing, painful, sexy stirring up of our human selves.” —Tony Kushner
“Naomi Wallace’s gorgeously written and philosophically rich celebration of a black Communist agitator in the Depression-era South … Wallace weaves together these proud, lonely souls with language rich in metaphor and, at times, as hard and piercing as a handful of nails.” —Time Out New York
“Naomi Wallace’s fierce new play tackles the plight of black communists in America … Naomi Wallace is a dangerous woman … not only in her writing … but also in her personal stand against what she sees as injustice and the peeling away of democratic rights.” —The Guardian (U K)
- GenresPlays
96 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2007
37 people want to read
About the author
Naomi Wallace
92 books17 followersNaomi Wallace is an American playwright, screenwriter and poet from Kentucky. She is widely known for her plays, and has received several distinguished awards for her work.
Her Finborough Theatre productions include And I And Silence, which subsequently transferred to Signature Theater, New York City. Other theatre productions include In the Heart of America (Bush Theatre), Slaughter City (Royal Shakespeare Company), One Flea Spare (Public Theater, New York City), The Trestle at Pope Lick Creekand Things of Dry Hours (New York Theatre Workshop), The Fever Chart: Three Visions of the Middle East (Public Theater, New York City), and Night is a Room (Signature Theater, New York City).
Naomi has been awarded the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize twice, the Fellowship of Southern Writers Drama Award, the Obie Award and the Horton Foote Award. She is also a recipient of the MacArthur Fellowship and a National Endowment for the Arts development grant. In 2013, Naomi received the inaugural Windham Campbell Prize for Drama, and in 2015 an Arts and Letters Award in Literature. Her play One Flea Spare was recently incorporated into the permanent repertoire of the French National Theatre, La Comédie-Française. Only two American playwrights have been added to La Comédie’s repertoire in two hundred years, the other being Tennessee Williams.
Her Finborough Theatre productions include And I And Silence, which subsequently transferred to Signature Theater, New York City. Other theatre productions include In the Heart of America (Bush Theatre), Slaughter City (Royal Shakespeare Company), One Flea Spare (Public Theater, New York City), The Trestle at Pope Lick Creekand Things of Dry Hours (New York Theatre Workshop), The Fever Chart: Three Visions of the Middle East (Public Theater, New York City), and Night is a Room (Signature Theater, New York City).
Naomi has been awarded the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize twice, the Fellowship of Southern Writers Drama Award, the Obie Award and the Horton Foote Award. She is also a recipient of the MacArthur Fellowship and a National Endowment for the Arts development grant. In 2013, Naomi received the inaugural Windham Campbell Prize for Drama, and in 2015 an Arts and Letters Award in Literature. Her play One Flea Spare was recently incorporated into the permanent repertoire of the French National Theatre, La Comédie-Française. Only two American playwrights have been added to La Comédie’s repertoire in two hundred years, the other being Tennessee Williams.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
February 15, 2025
I truly enjoyed this! My friend Adriana and I are reading this after our most recent buddy read, Robin D.G. Kelley’s Hammer and Hoe: Alabama Communists During the Great Depression. While that is an incredibly eye-opening book in its own right, I think Things of Dry Hours is a perfect companion, as it teems with the sort of energy, urgency, and emotion that I sometimes couldn’t access in Hammer and Hoe.
Naomi Wallace’s play is set in the same time and place (1932 Birmingham), and focuses on three characters who are brought together by the Depression’s stark conditions, and anti-Communist violence in their community. Tice Hogan, is a dedicated father and perhaps an even more dedicated labor organizer. As he notes, “Because Jesus Christ says the poor, that's us, are all brothers. And his right hand man, a quick little fellow, boils on his ass, goes by the name of Karl, says those who labor, that's us again, even if we are out of work, to make the wealth are one.” (49)
Throughout the play, Tice sets about his life’s work, which is bringing others the gospel of Communism. His daughter, Cali, is a stubborn and skeptical person who is determined to live life on her own terms. Their family dynamic is truly adorable, and your heart can’t help but throb when you see how they look out for each other and want the best for each other. One passage on page 93 adequately summarizes this bond:
All the air in the room immediately goes still when Corbin Teel, a white laborer on the run from the all powerful Tennessee Coal, Iron and Railroad Company (TCI), knocks on the Hogans’ front door. Over two acts, you see the Hogans go from regarding Corbin with suspicion to reluctantly enjoying of their forced house guest. Corbin’s relationship with Cali is full of lots of humor and aspiration, as you see them reaching for a potential relationship that could have more gender parity, racial unity, and genuine affection than the ones they’ve seen before.
Corbin and Tice’s dynamic is a bit coercive at times, but readers will be touched by Tice’s commitment to teaching Corbin a different path for manhood. I’d recommend reading Act 2 Scene 5 twice, because it’s heartbreaking to realize that Tice is right, Corbin has been changed by their time together. It comes to feel like this change is exactly why he becomes reluctant to leave the Hogans’ home, as if the lessons he’s learned can’t hold outside the one room where the play is staged.
Speaking of staging, even without seeing the play in real life, Wallace’s script lends itself to really visceral choreography. These characters’ emotional, physical, and intellectual dances leap off the page, and it’s a true joy to see them grow closer together. There is playfulness in much of their dialogue, even as the large shadow of the TCI (Tice calls their police force “more law than the law”) looms over their every moment.
In far fewer pages, Wallace gets to the heart of many topics from Hammer and Hoe: organizational analyses of the NAACP and Klan (48-49); the egalitarian aspirations of Communist marriages (in response to offering to help her with the laundry, Corbin tells Cali that the “reds say a new kinda man coming out of this decade”); and even the true nature of subjugation in the American South. Tice, the master recruiter, shows his convincing skill up close in a scene on pages 51-52:
As Tice and Corbin debate the merits and dangers of the Communist Party’s work in Birmingham, you see them coming closer and closer to a shared realization. In many such scenes, you see the two men eventually sharing lines to reflect this connection. In case it isn’t clear, I couldn’t recommend this play enough!! It’s a stunning story about human connection in times of deep consequence, and I will be eagerly looking to see if it’s ever put on in my area.
Naomi Wallace’s play is set in the same time and place (1932 Birmingham), and focuses on three characters who are brought together by the Depression’s stark conditions, and anti-Communist violence in their community. Tice Hogan, is a dedicated father and perhaps an even more dedicated labor organizer. As he notes, “Because Jesus Christ says the poor, that's us, are all brothers. And his right hand man, a quick little fellow, boils on his ass, goes by the name of Karl, says those who labor, that's us again, even if we are out of work, to make the wealth are one.” (49)
Throughout the play, Tice sets about his life’s work, which is bringing others the gospel of Communism. His daughter, Cali, is a stubborn and skeptical person who is determined to live life on her own terms. Their family dynamic is truly adorable, and your heart can’t help but throb when you see how they look out for each other and want the best for each other. One passage on page 93 adequately summarizes this bond:
CORBIN TEEL
Then maybe it's time you left your Daddy's house. You're not his wife.
CALI HOGAN
No, I'm not. But watch your step, Mr˙ Teel. I am my father's friend. And he is mine. That kind of thing, you don't know.
All the air in the room immediately goes still when Corbin Teel, a white laborer on the run from the all powerful Tennessee Coal, Iron and Railroad Company (TCI), knocks on the Hogans’ front door. Over two acts, you see the Hogans go from regarding Corbin with suspicion to reluctantly enjoying of their forced house guest. Corbin’s relationship with Cali is full of lots of humor and aspiration, as you see them reaching for a potential relationship that could have more gender parity, racial unity, and genuine affection than the ones they’ve seen before.
Corbin and Tice’s dynamic is a bit coercive at times, but readers will be touched by Tice’s commitment to teaching Corbin a different path for manhood. I’d recommend reading Act 2 Scene 5 twice, because it’s heartbreaking to realize that Tice is right, Corbin has been changed by their time together. It comes to feel like this change is exactly why he becomes reluctant to leave the Hogans’ home, as if the lessons he’s learned can’t hold outside the one room where the play is staged.
Speaking of staging, even without seeing the play in real life, Wallace’s script lends itself to really visceral choreography. These characters’ emotional, physical, and intellectual dances leap off the page, and it’s a true joy to see them grow closer together. There is playfulness in much of their dialogue, even as the large shadow of the TCI (Tice calls their police force “more law than the law”) looms over their every moment.
In far fewer pages, Wallace gets to the heart of many topics from Hammer and Hoe: organizational analyses of the NAACP and Klan (48-49); the egalitarian aspirations of Communist marriages (in response to offering to help her with the laundry, Corbin tells Cali that the “reds say a new kinda man coming out of this decade”); and even the true nature of subjugation in the American South. Tice, the master recruiter, shows his convincing skill up close in a scene on pages 51-52:
CORBIN TEEL
You'll never get ten dollars.
TICE HOGAN
(turns on him, playing the part)
Ah, the white slave speaks. Just how much are you getting paid now, young man?
CORBIN TEEL
I'm not.
TICE HOGAN
Work relief?
CORBIN TEEL
Red Cross wouldn't take any more of us on.
TICE HOGAN
But are you not a man? Do you not need to eat?
CORBIN TEEL
I need to eat, yeah. I am a man.
TICE HOGAN
Then you are one of us. Come and walk and shout with us. We can get ten dollars. We can get a whole lot more.
As Tice and Corbin debate the merits and dangers of the Communist Party’s work in Birmingham, you see them coming closer and closer to a shared realization. In many such scenes, you see the two men eventually sharing lines to reflect this connection. In case it isn’t clear, I couldn’t recommend this play enough!! It’s a stunning story about human connection in times of deep consequence, and I will be eagerly looking to see if it’s ever put on in my area.
February 27, 2010
Black and White...and Communism..all in one play!
January 12, 2015
A ponderous bore.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews