THE BURNING OF THE WHITE HOUSE

                             a play

               by Norman L. Berman                    

Thirty-eight-year-old Pyotr Ilych Tchaikovsky is driven to become Russia’s first international composer but he is moving into middle-age and gossip around Moscow is that he is a notorious homosexual.  He needs a wife.  As if by fate, two women come into his life: Nadezdha Von Meck, a fabulously wealthy dowager and Antonina Milyukova, an assertive, unbalanced seamstress.  Von Meck befriends Tchaikovsky via elaborately written letters.  She eventually offers to pay his all his expenses on one condition - they never meet.  Antonina, also sends him over-the-top love letters letting him know that she is a virgin and that she has saved herself for him.  Tchaikovsky takes advantage of Antonina’s naiveite and inexperience and marries her.  The marriage is a fiasco.  Tchaikovsky flees Russia fearing more gossip but Antonina is not as naïve as he thinks and threatens to expose Tchaikovsky.  With the patient, nurturing love of Von Meck, he comes to grips with his homosexuality and realizes his true nature. 

* Finalist in Bay Area Playwrights Festival

Playwrights Foundation enthusiastically recommends this play THE TCHAIKOVSKY LETTERS, as a Semi-Finalist for the Bay Area Playwrights Festival 2020. We were moved by the quality of the writing and the relevant and compelling themes that spoke to the mission of our festival. It excelled in a competitive process of 735 plays submitted this year and rose to the top after a six month long process discussing its merits with both national and local Bay Area readers, and we hope it moves swiftly towards production.

 My gosh. I literally read hundreds of scripts per year, plus work on my own scripts, so I'm serious when I ask you — how is this not already being produced today in a major theatre? Or, in my opinion, in a film studio? I thoroughly enjoyed reading your work. You've accomplished so much with the way you downplay the set and additional fanfare and keep the focus on these incredible relationships.  And you did so many clever things with the blocking without telling us how to produce it... I'm not even sure where to start with my appreciation for this wonderful story .   -  Southwest Theater and Film Productions.