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On April 16, 2002, in the Brockett Theatre in the Winship Building on the University of Texas at Austin campus, Mary Frances HopKins, Professor Emerita at Louisiana State University, performed a recital performance of a one-woman play by Laura Furman and Lynn C. Miller, Passenger on the Ship of Fools, based on the life and work of Katherine Anne Porter. The action of the play takes place on June 15, 1961, at the Yankee Clipper Inn, Cape Ann, Massachusetts, as Miss Porter is completing the manuscript of her novel, Ship of Fools. The play makes use of excerpts from Porter's published prose and correspondence, Barbara Thompson Davis's Paris Review interview, Joan Givner's biography, and Glenway Wescott's Continual Lessonsto scrutinize her shifting sense of self and journey from impoverished circumstances in childhood to life as a celebrated writer and woman of the world. The play moves to and from the day in June 1961 in flashbacks to 1931, 1945, the 1953-1954 academic year, and 1959, as Porter recalls experiences from 1901, 1914, 1918, 1924, 1926, 1929, and her time in Paris (1933-1936). The play depicts Porter's psychological struggle to complete her novel. The "Character Description" appended to the February 2002 draft of the play summarizes the playwrights' intention:

Porter has come to this isolated spot to finish her long-awaited novel, Ship of Fools. A writer who made her reputation as one of the finest short story writers of her generation has long been promising her publishers and her public a novel. After working on it for more than twenty-five years, and accepting advances on the book for twenty years, Porter has no choice but to finish it. Everything is at stake: she's 71 years old, broke, and her reputation rests on the book. In June of 1961, the novel is her albatross, and her last-ditch chance to establish herself as a writer of the first rank.

Actress Mary Frances HopKins has directed and performed the work of many modern and contemporary writers, including Flannery O'Connor, Eudora Welty, and Lee Smith. The author of many essays on narrative, performance, and Southern fiction, HopKins is recognized nationally as a pioneering scholar in the field of Performance Studies. She stepped into the role virtually at the last moment, as distinguished actress Irene Worth, who had contracted to perform the work, died unexpectedly on March 10. On May 2, 2001, Worth performed a short excerpt from the play for the Yaddo benefit at a dinner party hosted by Peter Gould at the Water Club in New York City. Another slightly truncated performance of the work will be featured at this year's Yaddo Summer Benefit to be held on the 400-acre Saratoga Springs, New York, estate of this artists' community. Actress Kathleen Chalfant, who garnered both respect and accolades from her Broadway performances in Angels in America and Wit, will portray Porter in this benefit.

Passenger on the Ship of Fools is the first collaborative work of Laura Furman and Lynn C. Miller. Furman is an award-winning novelist, short-story writer, and essayist whose work has appeared in New Yorker, Mirabella,, Vanity Fair, Ploughshares, Yale Review, Southwest Review, Cosmopolitan, and House and Garden. American Short Fiction, which she founded, was a three-time finalist for the National Magazine Award. She has published five books of fiction, including the recent Drinking with the Cook, and a memoir, Ordinary Paradise. A past president of the Institute of Texas Letters and recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, she's currently Associate Professor of English at the University of Texas at Austin. Born in New York City with a B.A. from Bennington College in Vermont, Furman has lived in Texas since 1978.

Lynn C. Miller has adapted the work of many modern and contemporary writers, including Richard Howard, Alice Adams, and Barbara Pym for stage performance. Six of her plays have been produced on stages across the United States, and she currently tours performances of Gertrude Stein and Edith Wharton. Her novel, The Fools' Journey, is forthcoming in Fall 2002. Holding graduate degrees from Northwestern University and the University of Southern California, she taught at USC and Pennsylvania State University before coming to the University of Texas at Austin in 1980. She has published numerous essays about women's performance art, autobiography in performance, and the adaptation and direction of feminist modernist writers. Miller is an Associate Professor of performance studies and the graduate advisor for the Women and Gender Studies Program.

After the performance, a brief talkback followed with Darlene Unrue and Beth Alvarez. Members of the capacity audience included Paul Porter, Porter Literary Trustee Barbara Thompson Davis, Southwest Texas State University professor Tom Grimes, Superintendent Yana Bland and students from the Katherine Anne Porter School, and benefactor of the Kyle, Texas, Katherine Anne Porter Literary Center Bill Johnson. The next afternoon in the auditorium of the Harry Ransom Center, Paul Porter, Barbara Thompson Davis, Mary Frances Hopkins, Laura Furman, and Lynn Miller participated in a panel discussion on Katherine Anne Porter and biographical drama. The play and panel discussion were sponsored by the following administrative units at the University of Texas at Austin: the College of Liberal Arts, the English Department, the Harry Ransom Center Ransom Chair, the Department of Theatre and Dance (including the Z. T. Scott Family Chair in Drama and the Theatre for Youth Chair), Plan II Honors Program, the Center for Women's Studies, and the Michener Center for Writers.