Grace at the Claremont

SOLD OUT - Join us at the Bar Harbor Historical Society for the world premiere of a new one-act play by Carolyn Gage!

Free to reserve a seat, and all donations at the event go directly to Bar Harbor Pride. There will be sparkling beverages and snacks!

In the summer of 1888, Emily Dickinson’s chaotic family descended on Southwest Harbor... Would the ship captain’s wife be able to tame the tempest?

In 1888, poet Emily Dickinson’s sister-in-law checked into the Claremont House of Southwest Harbor with her two adult children for a month-long vacation. The family, struggling with the recent death of Emily and a very public scandal, arrives with all their baggage—both literal and figurative. The daughter Mattie is frustrated, confused, and embarrassed by her family’s dysfunction, and she gets into a fight with the hotel owner, Grace Pease. Grace, a ship captain’s wife with years of experience at sea, has compassion for this young woman who is so desperate to escape her family’s never-ending drama. As the hotel employees come and go, the grace of Mount Desert Island’s beauty becomes a kind of third character, transforming both the rusticators and the residents.

Local playwright Carolyn Gage lives in Southwest Harbor, and she wrote the play to pair with Reef Point, her earlier one-act about a famous estate in Bar Harbor. “Grace at the Claremont was written during a year of unprecedented turmoil and drama in our nation, and it was my intention to write a play that would offer healing through a historical lens… and one that would reflect my profound appreciation for the beauty of this island.”