Part of the nine-play cycle,
The Orphans’ Home, which chronicles the fortunes of the Robedaux family of Harrison, Texas, in the 1900s.
“CONVICTS is a juicy slice of Lone Star gothic, wherein the fourteen-year-old Horace is discovered working as an assistant to a grizzled old cane plantation owner who oversees a labor force of black prisoners. The basis for a 1991 film starring Robert Duvall, CONVICTS is a glorious and pathetic ghost story, in which people are doomed to haunt themselves.” —The New York Times.
“A significant theatrical event…the kind of show you tell your grandchildren you saw. Cast adrift by the death of his own alcoholic father and the remarriage of his mother to a resentful man who loathes his stepson, Horace becomes a stranger in a familiar land, searching for a peace that continually eludes him. CONVICTS has the narrative sweep that you look for in major novels, coupled with the electric immediacy that only live theater can supply.” —Wall Street Journal.
Included in
The Orphans’ Home Cycle, Part One: The Story of a Childhood.
