A new play for Court Days Festival 2007
Written by Roger A. Hall

            All of the official council actions taken in DOG DAYS AT THE TOWN COUNCIL are factually based on actions of the Harrisonburg town council in the 1850s.  Of course, I have lifted votes that were taken throughout ten years of meetings and put them in one meeting, but they all occurred at one time or another. 

             As I read those minutes of the first ten years of the town’s existence, I could sense the council members feeling their way and trying to figure out the best ways to do things, such as raise money for operating the town.  They really did go round and round about the best way to tax dogs over the course of three separate meetings while voting on and rejecting several different plans, such as those discussed in the play.  Then too, they often passed an ordinance only to change it or rescind it a few days later.  They passed an ordinance to pen up and sell loose hogs, only to amend it after problems arose with the enforcement of the original law.  They passed a law requiring exhibitors to get a license only to grant exceptions for musical and scientific presentations soon after.

             One of the most intriguing things about the minutes of the town meetings is that they only include the official actions of the council.  There’s nothing about why certain actions were proposed nor about what kind of debate ensued.  Why, for example, did the council feel it necessary to prohibit disturbances specifically at worship services?  Was there a spate of disruptions to worship services in Harrisonburg?  Similarly, why was the council concerned about promoting “order and harmony in the council”?  Was the council riven with disorder and disharmony?  And why did they feel compelled to pass a law to protect the Mayor from insults and from “hot and angry words”?  It makes a modern reader of the minutes wonder what was being said to the Mayor in those days!

             It’s also true that some of the actions of the council reflect the pre-Civil War realities of slavery and discrimination toward even free blacks and those of mixed race who were known as mulatoes.  By law, they were forbidden the right to assembly and were banned from the streets at night.  At that time whipping could be used in lieu of a fine, but that punishment was reserved for blacks, whether slave or free.

             Certain aspects of life in the 1850s were of particular concern for the council.  Problems with the fire company recur, and the council did pass a law requiring citizens to have fire buckets handy.  Concern for clean water was ever present, and there were numerous ordinances pertaining to the maintenance of streams, well, and pumps.  Issues of curbing and paving take up many pages of the minutes, and, in a dispute over how much to pay one worker, the council actually did appoint one of their members to count the number of bricks laid.  The problem of disease was also real, and the council handled a suspected outbreak of smallpox with quarantine just as enacted in the play.

             Many of the issues of the council from over 150 years ago resonate even today, such as the concern for clean water and decisions regarding roads.  Even in the 1850s there must have been some problems between the council and the sergeant, the chief law enforcement officer, because there was a high turnover rate in that position.  It’s also true that as soon as the proprietor of the billiard table and bowling alley establishment was elected to council, the council rescinded the fees for billiard tables and bowling alleys.  And over 150 years later, the control of dogs is still an issue; the agenda for the March 27, 2007, city council meeting includes consideration of “disbursement of dog and cat sterilization funds.”

             All of the characters that I have listed as council members were, at some time in the 1850s, council members, although not necessarily at the same time.  Similarly, all the names of other characters in the play come from tax rolls of the period.  Since we don’t know much about these individual people, however, I’ve taken dramatic liberty in creating characters for those names on the page.  We have no idea, for instance, if Charles Young was skeptical and argumentative as I have made him out to be.

Roger A. Hall
Professor of Theatre and Dance
James Madison University