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Director’s Notes

As I and this great team of performers, designers, and stage craft professionals have attacked this project, we have all found that Harvey has truly touched our lives in so many ways, despite the inherent silliness. For a play that was on Broadway for five years (becoming the 35th longest-running show to date), then became a very famous film starring Jimmy Stewart in 1950, very little is known about Harvey’s creator and the Pulitzer-prize winner for drama in 1945, Mary Coyle Chase. We know that she spent her entire life in Denver, CO. We know that she became a newspaper reporter for the Rocky Mountain News, and was known as “our little Mary.” We know that she wrote a subsequent play called Mrs. McThing. And that is about it. Mary Chase is, for all intents and purposes, Harvey himself. She is invisibly pulling the strings of this wacky cast of characters. So is Harvey. And we can feel his invisible influence working in our lives, revealing our hidden desires and our true feelings about ourselves. I hope that he will touch your lives, too.
Susanna Wilson, director

 From Wikipedia:
Born in Denver, Colorado in 1906, Chase remained in Denver her entire life. In 1924, she began her career as a journalist on the Rocky Mountain News, leaving in 1931 to raise a family. At the News, she started writing on the society pages, but soon became part of the news itself as "our little Mary", reporting the news from either a comic or a sob sister, emotional angle. In the 1920s, reporters typically worked in The Front Page tradition: putting in long hours, drinking hard, and stopping at nothing to beat the competition to a story. Running around Denver with photographer Harry Rhoads in a Model T Ford, she recalled, "In the course of a day, Harry and I might begin at the Police Court, go to a murder trail at the West Side Court, cover a party in the evening at Mrs. Crawford Hill's mansion, and rush to a shooting at 11pm.

 The following is from a separate article that I found interesting. This is a full exerpt. Credits are at the bottom.

Phooka

There is also an Irish fairy known as the phooka, pouca, or puca, this is very similar to the Welsh pwca. The Irish phooka derives its name from ‘poc’ and refers to a male goat. It has also been speculated that the name might also possess Scandinavian origins and refer to ‘pook’ meaning a nature spirit. This second origin would be congruent with the use of the term phooka as it is sometimes used within Ireland as a general reference to all fairies.
As a shape-shifter, the phooka is able to take on a variety of animal forms including that of a goat, a horse, an ass, a bull, and an eagle. In Co. Waterford and Co. Wexford, for example, the phooka appears as an eagle with a huge wingspan.
The phooka has been described as a beautiful and sleek horse, dark and wild in countenance, with a long mane and sulphurous yellow eyes. The beast roams across the countryside at night wrecking havoc and mayhem. If it rains and the sun is shining brightly, it is considered a sign that the phooka will come out that night. Of course, it is not all that unusual for the sun to be shining while it rains in Ireland so it must be assumed that the phooka is out almost every night!
The phooka is said to tear down fences and gates, tramples and ruins crops, and frightens the farm animals to the point where the chickens will not lay eggs and the cows will not give milk. But, this is not all without good reason. The phooka is mischievous and will call out the name of those it wants to ride with him. If refused, the phooka will revenge itself by damaging the landowner’s property.
Contrary to popular belief, the phooka was not always malevolent. In times when the old traditions were still upheld by the people, the phooka was venerated for his wisdom. The day that was held as being most sacred to the phooka was the first of November. Mountains, hills, and other high places – these were the sacred places where the phooka could be found and rituals were performed in his honor.
The Púca na Samhna emerges from Croagh Patrick in Co. Mayo at Samhain and will speak to people of the coming year and foretells the events that might befall them during that time. In past times, gifts were left for the phooka at the mountain. But, this tradition has ceased due to the rise in Catholicism and the presence of the clergy. In the case of the story of the piper and the phooka from the “Leabhar Sgeulaigheachta,” the phooka conveyed the piper to the sidhe mound at Croagh Patrick and back again without causing him any harm.
In Co. Roscommon the phooka is said to appear as a black goat with large curling horns. However, in Killorglin, Co. Kerry, there is also a three-day festival that is held in mid-August known as the Puck Fair. A wild goat, or puck, is brought down from the mountains and is crowned as king. The definitive history of the festival remains unknown, but the fair has been held since 1603 and is probably older than that. During the English occupation, it is said that a goat broke away from its herd and alerted the nearby town of Killorglin of danger of an approaching army. In that goat’s honor, the recent Puck Fair was born. Perhaps we can speculate that it was indeed one of the phooka that came to the aid of the people? We will never know…
Small mountain lakes and springs are sometimes known as the pollaphuca, or the Phooka’s Pool. Many of these waters originate or are within close proximity to the River Bann and the River Liffey. Many of the pollaphuca have been renamed in more Catholic time to St. Patrick’s Well. The poula phook, is the name of a waterfall that can be found in the Wicklow mountains where the River Liffey flows, but it is also a term that can be used to describe almost any cave or hole in the ground.
In Co. Fermanagh there lies the Binlaughlin Mountain is also known as the ‘peak of the speaking horse’. In the south of the county there was even a tradition of gathering at certain high places, such as the tops of mountains, to wait for the speaking horse, or phooka, to appear. This occurred on Bilberry Sunday, or what some prefer to refer to as Lughnasdah.
The phooka, or aughisky, is said to also take the shape of a horse. It is said the if a person is able to bridle one of the aughisky and keep them away from the water that they make a most wonderful steed. However, should the fairy horse see but a single glimpse of the water, he would run at full speed toward the water plunging the rider into its depths and devouring him. The bridles used are said in some instances to belong to the phooka, but that seems doubtful. Some stories refer to the use of three of the hairs from a phooka to be used in the making of the bridle and that the power would be granted to person to capture the creature – but the ongoing conflict to gentle the creature would still be quite voracious.
The phooka is also said to induce children to mount him, and then to plunge with the children over a precipice killing them. The Scottish kelpie is also attributed with similar feats.
Some bits of folklore states that the phooka is only visible to the person to whom it attaches itself. The phooka is also said to take the form of the bogeyman and frighten children. This folk belief is still commonly held in Co. Laois.
Some stories relate how the phooka is helpful and will assist with the sweeping and cleaning of the house. In the case of the story of the piper and the phooka from the “Leabhar Sgeulaigheachta,” the phooka conveyed the piper to the assembly of the sidhe at Croagh Patrick and carried him back again without causing the piper any harm.
In the rural regions of Co. Down, the phooka appears as a small misshapen goblin and demands the ‘phooka's share' of the harvest that remains on the ground. The folk custom of this area make the gate posts of your land in such a manner as the right post contains a nice bench for the benevolent phooka to sit and the left post has sharp rocks for the nasty malignant fairies. The Mountains of Mourne are also home to the phooka.
Throughout Ireland, the blackberries are considered to belong to the phooka and that they are spoiled and no longer edible after the first of November which commemorates the beginning of winter. Some say that the phooka has spit on them, but this seems odd as the act of spitting can be seen as a blessing rather than a curse. But the sentiment is apparent in other bits of folklore that state that the phooka either urinated or defecated on the blackberries!
In other areas of Ireland, the blackberries are considered to belong to the phooka after Michaelsmas has passed. It is said that Michaelsmas was the date on which the Catholic devil was thrown out of heaven and landed on a blackberry bramble. In his anger, he cursed the bush and performed several heinous acts that consequently made the berries inedible.
This depiction of the phooka also harkens back to the folkloric depictions of the Catholic devil as a horned and cloven-hoofed creature that appears as half-human and half-goat. In many ways this countenance is also reminiscent of a satyr or the appearance of Shakespeare’s Puck character in his play, “A Midsummer’s Nights Dream.”
By: Aisling Bronach of House Shadow Drake
Published in Traditions Magazine, Samhain 2004 Issue

Susanna Wilson
Artistic Director
SecondStory Repertory