Ghosts of New Orleans
by Rosary Hartel O'neill

Both anthologies ( A Louisiana Gentlemen and Ghosts of New Orleans ) are about New Orleans: the past and the present.

This author has grown up in the city, and there is a certain timelessness about it - the past influencing the present.

All the plays are permeated with the sensuousness, decadence and bewilderment of brave and driven people living in chaos, confusion, extreme pleasure and delight.

I hope you get a taste of this rich jambalaya of life as you experience these plays.

Volume Two, Ghosts of New Orleans , contains historical plays, mostly Victorian, with characters driven by stratified society and tradition.

Knowledge of New Orleans history made the author want to adapt Uncle Vanya, taking the bones of the Russian play and placing it on a plantation called Waverly, the last sugarcane plantation in Louisiana.

This play, Uncle Victor , won a number of awards.

Also included in this volume is the piece Degas in New Orleans , which the author created based on her research of Edgar Degas' visit to New Orleans in 1872.

So struck was she by by all Degas' relatives who had lived with him in 1872, that this nine character play was formed.

Degas had tried to save his Uncle's failing cotton business and create new roots in the city of his mother.

He fell prey to scandal and decadence, as the play depicts.

Other titles included in this collection: The Awakening of Kate Chopin John Singer Sargent and Madame X Beckett at Greystone Bay Property