Student-Written Play Brings Robert Frost’s Poetry To Life

Robert Frost’s poetry bleeds with passion and hope, reflecting humanity and his own life experiences. 

Liberty University Theater Department’s “The Darkest Evening” takes the true story of Frost’s venture into the Great Dismal Swamp  and uses it to showcase his life and poetry. 

In 1894, after being rejected by his love, Frost took a path home through the Great Dismal Swamp in Suffolk, Virginia. As he tumbled into despair, death in a swamp seemed to be a better option than to live without the person he loved. While walking through the swamp, Frost finds a literal and metaphorical light to lead him out of the swamp and to the rest of his life. 

“The whole show ultimately shows memories of his past and choices he’s made to get to the swamp,” Mitchell Templeton, who plays Frost’s grandfather, said. “It’s always set in the swamp.”

As Frost delves deeper, he wrestles between being sucked into the Great Dismal world and coming back to reality. The show’s lighting and sound help the audience switch back and forth between Frost’s memories, calling him to life outside the swamp and incorporating the mystical voices that reside there. 

Because students wrote this play, the writers and actors conducted more research than they do for regular shows. The entire process of research, writing, casting and rehearsing takes about a year, Templeton said. Many of the writers are also in one of the production’s two casts, each consisting of seven actors. 

“They didn’t just write it. They’ve been a real help in getting this done,”               Templeton said.

The students also put in extensive research because the characters were real people. They did not have access to all the information about each individual, making the character development process simultaneously harder and more interesting. Most of the information gathered was on Frost.   

“Playing somebody who was a real person is very interesting,” Gabriel Von Oven, who plays Frost, said. “Of course we will never be able to exactly portray Robert. I hope I can come close to doing him justice.”

Other characters in the play had even less historical information to be built upon. 

“It’s been a bit of a challenge not knowing. There is no specific storyline on him (Frost’s grandfather) — which is kind of fun,” Templeton said. “It gives me the opportunity to depict who this character is.”

As the student writers and actors produced the show, they have seen the passion displayed in Frost’s poems like never before. The swamp brings his poetry to life in a tormenting and eerie fashion while maintaining its fervor. 

“This play is really going to show how passionate of an individual Robert really was,” Von Oven said. “He was so passionate about his poetry, but most of all his now wife Elinor White. His whole life was anchored upon her. He loved her with all of his heart, and that’s where and that’s how he crafted a lot of his poems.” 

The students ultimately want the audience to see Frost’s own humanity and the hope that he clings to while working through the swamp. The hope brought afloat by his memories build a pathway back to life and reality and out of the darkest evening of his life. 

“The Darkest Evening” is playing from Feb. 25 to March 6 at Liberty’s Tower Theater. Tickets are available at www.liberty.edu/arts/theatre/tickets/.  

Hetzel is a feature reporter.