Robert Lawson’s Terrible Destiny comes to life at Franklin Pierce
Jan 11, 2010

Professor Robert Lawson presents his new play, Terrible Destiny, at the Black Box Theater this week at Franklin Pierce University. The play, inspired by the American author, Truman Capote’s, In Cold Blood, has taken three months to produce and is now ready to be revealed to the community.
Terrible Destiny is a play based upon the brutal 1959 murder of the Clutter family. The title has come from a line in the original book and the production of the play closes a day short of the murders, 51 years ago. The idea of the play came about when Professor Lawson came across Capote’s book in the discard pile of the library, “I have seldom been so moved by a work of human effort, regardless whether it was literature, film, theater or art” Lawson has said.
With Lawson as the primary director and students from the Franklin Pierce University community, as cast members and production staff, Lawson’s vision of Capote’s original work has come to life in Rindge, N.H. With the “proportions of a Greek tragedy” and the base of the writing coming from Capote’s non-fictional “masterpiece”, this play will be another great addition to the theatrical archive of the University.