Gwendolyn Rice
playwright
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Fly Away Home

A new play by Gwendolyn Rice. On a hot August night in 1914, two men boarded a train in Chicago, bound for the Wisconsin countryside. One was famed master builder Frank Lloyd Wright. The other was Edwin Cheney, whose wife Mamah left him to be with the eccentric architect. They have both received the devastating news that Wright’s home, Taliesin, is on fire. Historic accounts do not reveal what the two men talked about during the agonizing six-hour journey north. But they had plenty to say, hounded by the press on the worst day of their lives, desperate to know the extent of the blaze, and the final death toll.

 
“Lady bird, lady bird,
Fly away home;
Your house is on fire,
And your children, they will burn.”
— Old English Folk Song
 
Fly Away Home a play by Gwendolyn Rice
 

Fly Away Home

Cast: 3M, 1F

On a hot August night in 1914, two men boarded a train in Chicago, bound for the Wisconsin countryside. One was famed master builder Frank Lloyd Wright. The other was Edwin Cheney, whose wife Mamah left him to be with the eccentric architect. They have both received the devastating news that Wright’s home, Taliesin, is on fire. Historic accounts do not reveal what the two men talked about during the agonizing six-hour journey north. But they had plenty to say, hounded by the press on the worst day of their lives, desperate to know the extent of the blaze, and the final death toll.