The Outside

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The Outside

by Susan Glaspell

Genre: Comedy, Drama
Setting: America
Format of Original Source: Play
Recommended Adaptation Length:

Candidate for Adaptation? Promising

EXCERPT:

MRS. PATRICK

This is the Outside. Sand. [Picking some of it up in her hand and letting it fall on the beach grass.] Sand that covers–hills of sand that move and cover.

ALLIE MAYO

Woods. Woods to hold the moving hills from Provincetown. Provincetown–where they turn when boats can’t live at sea. Did you ever see the sails come round here when the sky is dark? A line of them–swift to the harbor–where their children live. Go back! [Pointing.] Back to your edge of the woods that’s the edge of the dunes.

MRS. PATRICK

The edge of life. Where life trails off to dwarfed things not worth a name.

[Suddenly sits down in the doorway.

ALLIE MAYO

Not worth a name. And–meeting the Outside!

[Big with the sense of the wonder of life.

MRS. PATRICK

[Lifting sand and letting it drift through her hand.] They’re what the sand will let them be. They take strange shapes like shapes of blown sand.

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