Terra Nova by Ted Tally

First published: 1981

First produced: 1977, at the Yale Repertory Theater, New Haven Connecticut

Type of plot: Psychological; history; memory play

Time of work: Winter, 1911-1912

Locale: Antarctica and London

Principal Characters:

• Robert Falcon Scott, an English explorer
• Roald Amundsen, a Norwegian explorer
• Kathleen, Scott’s wife
• Wilson, a doctor in Scott’s expedition team
• Bowers,
• Oates, and
• Evans, other members of Scott’s expedition team

The Play

The play opens with a bare stage set in the winter of 1912. A series of ten rear-projected slides depict the journey of Robert Falcon Scott’s ship, the Terra Nova, to Antarctica. A weary Scott sits writing, speaking the words as he writes. Forty-one years old, he has lost the race to the Pole and considers himself a failure. Roald Amundsen, the Norwegian explorer who reached the Pole before Scott, appears throughout the play to both taunt and debate the Englishman. In many ways, Amundsen functions as Scott’s conscience, articulating Scott’s internal doubts. With the exception of the banquet scene that opens act 2, Amundsen appears only to Scott. Kathleen, Scott’s wife, is a compellingly intelligent artist; she also appears only to Scott. This is a memory play, a mixture of the expedition narrative and Scott’s last memories.

Amundsen enters and introduces Scott to an audience of Royal Society members, who have gathered to honor the explorers. Scott, although confused as past and present bleed together, explains to the audience the difference between his and Amundsen’s strategies and ethics. Scott will train and travel on foot both to and from the Pole, hauling a one-thousand-pound sledge without the aid of dogs. Amundsen will use dogs, slaughtering the animals when they are no longer of use. During this scene, Scott’s wife, Kathleen, enters and reveals that she is pregnant with Scott’s son. Scott’s men, Oates, Bowers, Wilson, and Evans, enter hauling the heavy sledge. Oates is a hardened soldier, Bowers is an optimist, Wilson is a principled doctor, and Evans, the largest and strongest of the men, is the first to show symptoms of physical breakdown. It is the beginning of the last leg of their journey.

Kathleen reenters. She and Scott have been married for two years and have a young son. This scene delineates the differences between Kathleen and Scott. Kathleen’s artistic tastes are seemingly in opposition to Scott’s withdrawn personality and his obsessive drive to reach the Pole. Their differences, as Ted Tally points out, complement one another. Scott’s men enter and set up their tent. It is the seventy-fifth day of the journey, and they are twenty-seven days from the Pole. Their rations are running low and Evans has a deep, unattended gash in his frostbitten hand that is becoming gangrenous. Nevertheless, the men joke in the face of possible death, demonstrating compassion and bravery despite the mounting tension.

Amundsen appears and discusses Scott’s progress: Evans is ill, facing snow blindness and eventual madness. When Amundsen advocates leaving Evans, Scott concurs, confronting Evans with the accusation that he has put his own ambitions over the good of the team. As if to highlight Evans’s foolishness, Amundsen plants the Norwegian flag at the South Pole, becoming the first human to set foot on the southernmost tip of the globe. Scott and his men also reach the Pole, only to find the Norwegian’s artifacts. Scott and his men arrange themselves for a group picture as Scott speaks of the impending end of his life and the end of his heroic dreams of glory. The lights ascend on a rear-projected slide of the men. Amundsen enters and joins the men onstage as they pose. The lights fade, leaving only the slide of the historical photograph of the Scott expedition at the Pole.

Act 2 opens with a hanging chandelier and a lavish dining table. Scott and his men enter and greet each other as if for the first time. This is an imagined reunion in which the lavish food and wine ordered by the men from Amundsen (dressed as a French waiter) represent Scott’s desperate yearning for their survival. Amundsen exits, reenters in arctic gear, and helps Scott into his arctic clothing. Scott’s men also reenter dressed for the Antarctic. Evans walks with difficulty, his mind beginning to fail.

Kathleen enters. It is her first private meeting with Scott after their introduction. Scott’s reveals that he has been a navy man since the age of thirteen and knows little else. He is, Kathleen says, rock hard on the outside but a haunted dreamer inside. Bowers, Wilson, and Oates enter with the sledge, Amundsen perched on top. The men know they have failed and fear the public will turn on them, making the navy look ridiculous. Evans enters as the other men exit. His hands are purple and blackened with blood poisoning. He is raving mad. Scott and his men reenter as Evans convulses, collapses, and dies. In tableau, Scott cradles Evans in his arms. Kathleen enters and asks her husband to say goodnight to their son. Scott cradles the dead Evans, a pictorial metaphor that produces an equivalency between Scott’s polar and domestic families.

The next scene is set two weeks after Evans dies. The men are returning from the Pole, forty miles from the relief station. Bowers is snow-blind and Oates limps on gangrenous feet. Although a treacherous storm is forming, Scott will not leave the failing Oates. Against Wilson’s wishes, Scott divides the morphine for each man to use for suicide as needed. Scott is about to administer a lethal dose to Oates when the dying man becomes conscious, states that he wishes to die, and staggers off into the blinding storm. As Amundsen points out, this is the central moment in Scott’s life. In extremis, it is not the race to the Pole that is the true test of his ideals but rather his moral choices in the face of death. He rejects suicide as the easy way out. It is the 141st day of the expedition, and they are only eleven miles from safety but are halted by a blizzard, unable to move. Scott writes to the wives of his men and repeats the words from his journal that opened the play: “The causes of the disaster are these. . . . ”

Kathleen enters and is informed of her husband’s death. Amundsen, on the opposite side of the stage, tells Scott of the Great War (World War I) and how it has changed the world. Oates and Evans enter in civilian clothing, restored to life. The final dialogue represents a patchwork of Scott’s last thoughts. Loving and proud, Kathleen mourns: Amundsen introduces him to the Royal Society. Oates, Bowers, and Amundsen echo the pessimistic words already articulated during the play. As the wind crescendos, Scott abruptly banishes these thoughts and all but Amundsen exit. Alone with Scott, Amundsen delivers a Viking eulogy and exits. Scott, now completely alone, writes the last words in his journal, praising the endurance and courage of his men, a tale that he knows will stir the hearts of all Englishmen.

Dramatic Devices

This is a memory play that occurs within the mind of one character, and several dramatic devices are employed to keep the narrative coherent. The bare stage allows for easy shifts in time and place. The tent, sledge, dining table, and chandelier, the only large sets employed, are quickly shifted onstage and offstage by the characters. The slides, lighting, and sound effects complement the shifting props, marking transitions between the polar narrative and Scott’s internal thoughts. Spotlights separate Kathleen (and often Amundsen) from the central action. The rear screen slides function as visual exposition, giving the audience details of the historical time and place. The scrim also serves as a device for the dramatic use of silhouette. The entrance of the characters into a scene already in progress communicates the fluidity of time and place that marks the entirety of the play. Because the play dramatizes a well-known event, it makes effective use of dramatic irony: The audience’s knowledge of history inflects the dialogue of the men who are about to die. Tally maintains a sense of tension through the existential uncertainties that Scott experiences, his relationship to the other characters, and the physical horror of their collective experience.

Critical Context

Ted Tally graduated from Yale College and received his masters of fine arts degree in playwriting from the Yale School of Drama. During the 1970’s and most of the 1980’s, he honed his playwriting skills in theater. Terra Nova was first produced for the Yale Repertory Theatre, winning both an Obie in New York and the Drama-Logue award in Los Angeles. The play is loosely based on Scott’s journal, which was found along with his frozen body. Regional theaters regularly produce Terra Nova, and Tally adapted the play for television in 1984.

Tally is primarily known for his screenwriting. His best-known work is his 1991 screenplay of Thomas Harris’s novel, The Silence of the Lambs (1988), for which he won an Academy Award for best adapted screenplay. The Silence of the Lambs, like Terra Nova, articulates the inner psychology of its central character, Federal Bureau of Investigation agent Clarisse, who, like Scott, must come to terms with her own ambition and psychological fears. It is interesting to note that both The Silence of the Lambs and Terra Nova contain gender issues that suggest possibilities for further exploration. Both Clarisse and Kathleen are intelligent and strong women operating successfully in male-dominated milieus.

Sources for Further Study

Andreach, Robert J. “Tally’s Terra Nova: From Historical Journals to Existential Journey.” Twentieth Century Literature: A Scholarly and Critical Journal 35 (1989): 65-73.

Huntford, Roland. The Last Place on Earth. New York: Atheneum, 1985.

Tally, Ted. Terra Nova. New York: Dramatists Play Service, 1982.