High atop one of those dunes, above a broad and shimmering expanse of Cape Cod Bay, sits the pristine white cottage where the painter Edward Hopper and his wife, Josephine Nivison Hopper, also a painter but a thwarted one, came summer after summer for decades, starting in the 1930s. Like innumerable artists before and since, they were drawn to the abundant, unobstructed light of the Outer Cape.
Why they were drawn to each other — why they clung to each other over 43 years of a tumultuous, sometimes violent marriage, until his death in 1967 — is open to interpretation. “Hopper’s Ghosts,’’ a play by Kevin Rice that is making its world premiere through Aug. 28 at Payomet Performing Arts Center in Truro, imagines what happened inside their relationship, a union that has come to be seen largely through the lens of Jo Hopper’s voluminous diaries. Of the taciturn Edward’s thoughts on the marriage, like his thoughts on most other matters, there is little record.
“I have to be hopeful,’’ says Rice, a Wellfleet playwright who is also Payomet’s artistic director. “You know, you’ll hear different stories about them and their relationship, their enmity toward one another. But it’s difficult to believe that they were able to remain married for so long and not have achieved some understanding.’’
Fittingly, then, “Hopper’s Ghosts’’ is a comedy, not a tragedy — albeit a comedy whose two characters are already dead, skittering through time as they reenact and reimagine their life together, and his paintings.
“Do you ever get tired of painting me?’’ asks Jo, who served as the model for virtually all of the women in her husband’s paintings starting from the time of their marriage in 1924, when they were both 41.
“What makes you think it’s you?’’ Edward replies.
In the play, which is directed by Daisy Walker, Jo describes herself as Edward’s “devoted wife a.k.a. secretary, spokesman, cook, model, manager, fantasy object cum domestic abuse victim.’’ The phrasing is Rice’s, but the details are taken from life.
