‘A research labor of love’: Spokane playwright turns to Appalachian pack horse librarian history for inspiration behind ‘Minister of Sorrow’ at Stage Left Theatre

Spokane playwright Pam Kingsley had a very good reason for not picking up her fellow book club member’s chosen book.

The fictional novel about pack horse librarians, women who delivered books on horseback to rural areas of Kentucky during the Great Depression, so interested Kingsley that she began researching the Works Progress Administration program, which ran from 1935 to 1943.

She found photos of pack horse librarians from the Smithsonian, read anecdotes from that time and dove into Kentucky history. She also played a lot of Appalachian and Kentucky folk music from that era.

“I was enthralled, basically, with how these women went up the treacherous trails to connect people up in the hills and hanging off mountains and hidden in Appalachia with the outside world,” she said. “It was a research labor of love.”

The result of this research was “Minister of Sorrow,” which tells the fictional story of Emma Pace and the people she meets during her time as a pack saddle librarian. The first iteration of the show was a seven-minute monologue written for Stage Left Theater’s Masterpiece Monologues.

The piece eventually grew into a one-woman show. This version won the top prize at the 2023 Appalachian Playwriting Festival and opened the 77th season of the Parkway Playhouse in Burnsville, North Carolina.

Kingsley traveled to North Carolina to see if “Minister of Sorrow” worked onstage, then returned to Spokane and expanded and refined the piece with the Spokane Playwrights Laboratory.

The new version of the play, starring Hazel Bean as Emma Pace, opens at Stage Left Theater on Friday and runs through Dec. 22. “Minister of Sorrow” is directed by Sarah Dahmen. Matthew Pope is the assistant director, and Gabriel Conesa Caquias is the stage manager.

Though a self-proclaimed city slicker, Bean fell in love with Pace’s story and the other characters while doing lights for the Spokane Playwrights Laboratory workshop of the piece.

“Like Pam said, it’s easy to go down a rabbit hole with this, because the idea of the pack horse librarian, which I had never heard of, is so compelling and particularly the way that Pam has written Emma and her story,” she said. “It is very easy to fall into it and to love the characters and these beautiful words that Pam’s put behind them.”

Unable to see the show during its time at Spokane Playwrights Laboratory, the script is what captured Dahmen’s attention. The southern United States and Appalachia in particular can often be portrayed in stereotypical ways, she said, so it was nice to see a piece that shared the resilience of the people living in the region.

Neither Bean nor Dahmen had worked on a one-person show before, so “Minister of Sorrow” brought fun challenges with it.

Transforming into a variety of characters, including a 6-year-old boy, a 50-year-old “fire and brimstone” preacher and an 80-year-old woman, along with her role as Pace, was one of those challenges, but costume designer Patty Garegnami helped by making Pace’s outfit a simple period-appropriate base which could be added to when Bean was acting as other characters.

Bean also worked on different voices and physicalities to bring each character to the forefront. She tried to get into each character’s mindset and figure out their intentions in each scene.

As the only performer, Bean had to memorize about 40 pages of text, so she and Dahmen made it a point to check in regularly about her progress. These check-ins informed Bean’s performance, in a way, as Dahmen and Bean met in the countryside so Bean could get a taste of what growing up north of Spokane was like for Dahmen and what it would have been like for someone like Pace.

“The natural environment is a very wonderful place to be, and it inspires the imagination and makes you feel very connected, I think, as a human being,” Dahmen said. “I thought, ‘OK, what I can offer Hazel is an opportunity to see some of the world as I have seen it, and have her walk along the railroad tracks.’

“I took her to the country church that I went to as a teenager, so that we can see how immediately, when you’re in that kind of faith community, how people connect with each other and care about each other.”

Bringing Pace’s travels to the stage was another challenge, but scenic designer and technical director James “Moss” Landsiedel created what Dahmen described as different zones. One feels like sitting on a back porch while another feels like a library. Yet another feels like being outside among foliage.

Stage Left artistic/managing director Alana Shepherd also helps express the change in location through her lighting design, as well as the connection Pace has with her horse.

Altogether, it reminds Dahmen of the experience of reading a book.

“When we’re reading a book, our mind fills in all of these images that we’re given, so we have someone on stage orating to us,” she said. “We have a few different elements that spark our imagination, but our imaginations are also incredibly powerful to the experience, and so with the music, the lights, the scenic design, it’s like diving head first into a book, and your brain really fills in the whole rest of the world.”

The final element of “Minister of Sorrow” is musician Joey Quintana, who portrays the Muse and soundtracks Pace’s story with banjo, guitar and mandolin. Kingsley said the music is important to the show because it’s part of the Appalachian culture and helps audiences feel the spirit of the people and the mountains.

“It’s transportive,” she said. “It takes you there in notes, and then add to it the voice of the people who have been there, as embodied by Hazel. It brings the whole mise-en-scene together.”

While the story of the pack horse librarians is from a time and place far from modern-day Spokane, Kingsley, Dahmen and Bean feel like it fits the current day and the holiday season especially, as the story revolves around timeless themes of resilience and hope. Stories like “Minister of Sorrow,” Dahmen said, bring more light to the world when it’s dark, literally and figuratively.

“When you have something that is uplifting, like a story like this that is focused on resilience and healing and the beauty of living through hard times, even if it’s complicated, that’s another light that we put on display in a season of darkness …” she said. “It’s really wonderful to bring it here, because I think it’s the right time, it’s the right season, and I think our community will love it.”