`GHOSTS STILL SPEAK'

Dr. Sharon Bebout wrote and directs "Ghosts Still Speak," which is based on the book "The Earthquake America Forgot" by Dr. David Stewart, right, and Dr. Ray Knox.

Something happened when Dr. Sharon Bebout toured the New Madrid area with Dr. David Stewart and Dr. Ray Knox many months ago.

When Bebout returned, she ditched her first draft of a play based on the two geologists' book, "The Earthquake America Forgot." She realized the play couldn't just be set in the past because the effects of the earthquakes that devastated the New Madrid area for five months in 1811 and 1812 are still here.

Her play, "Ghosts Still Speak," opens at 8 p.m. Friday at Southeast's Forrest H. Rose Theatre. Other performances will be at the same time Saturday, Wednesday, Oct. 17, 18 and 19.

More than 300 earthquakes are recorded along the New Madrid Fault every year, but the big ones of nearly 200 years ago still figure in the lives of Southeast Missourians. For instance, the Indian tribes of the region were becoming strong and unified just before the earthquakes but took them as a sign to leave. The region's Indian heritage all but vanished with them, remembered now mostly in the names of our athletic teams.

The monumental project that is the Little River Drainage District was necessary only because of the earthquakes turned the land to swamp.

Church membership soared.

Bebout, whose previous original plays -- "Walking on Our Knees" and "Heads Above Water, Heartblood in the Sand" -- have to been similarly anthropological, wants to illustrate how our ancestors survived a horrific tragedy whose signs still can bee seen in our land and in our lives.

"We have to realize we are affected events, and these events will continue," she says. "It calls for people not to hide their heads in the sand."

One thing "The Earthquake America Forgot" did is dispel the myth that not many people died during those five months the quakes continued. Stewart and Knox now put the number at 500-1,000.

"When they said 10-15 people died, they were counting people on land," Stewart says. "Nobody counted all the deaths on the river."

Most Indian villages were inundated with an almost total loss of life, he says.

Stewart, who lives on a farm outside Marble Hill, and the Arkansas-based Knox realized the book's stories about what really happened to people during the earthquakes could be useful to artists.

"We were hoping people like Sharon would pick it up," he said. "It's a fascinating time, and with fiction you can flesh out the parts."

The book contains much material that had not previously been reported, especially the untold story of what happened to the Native American tribes in the area.

"Ghosts Still Speak" recounts the losses and stories of Native Americans, slaves, settlers and riverboat captains. Captain Mathias Speed tells of watching 28 boats capsize in the falls the quakes created in the Mississippi River. "The desperate cries of the drowning men still echo in my dreams at night," he says in the play.

A slave recalls how the earthquakes allowed justice to be served, and heartwrenching true stories -- of a teen-age girl with a broken leg left to die by her terrified family, and a young boy whose mother can't believe the earth simple swallowed him -- are given life.

As a playwright, Bebout said her challenge was to unify these fragments. She did this primarily through the use of a character called Spirit, who is a bridge between the past and present.

But it was the trip to New Madrid that brought everything together for her. "I'm a field researcher," she says. "I don't do well until I'm able to see what I'm writing about. I had to see that fault zone."

Bebout says Dr. Field, the geology professor in the play, is a hybrid of Stewart, Knox and other professors she knows.

Stewart is the founder and former director of the Center for Earthquake Studies at Southeast Missouri State University. He was terminated awhile after he joined with New Mexico climatologist Iben Browning in warning about the increased likelihood of a quake along the New Madrid Fault late in 1990.

The quake didn't occur, but thousands of people now have quake-proofed their homes and are much more aware of the dangers.

Bebout's play includes a Shawnee prophet, Tenskwatawa, who predicted that the earthquakes would come. When they do he is blamed. "The Great Spirit has shaken the ground because the Shawnee prophet is an imposter," people said.

Apparently, earthquake prophets are damned if they're right and damned if they're wrong.

A reception for playwright-director Bebout and for Stewart will be held immediately after Friday night's premiere of the play. Stewart will sign copies of his book.