Ever wonder what goes on in the mind of a playwright?
Our Author Insights series features personal essays from playwrights, offering a behind-the-scenes look at the ideas and experiences that shaped their work.
Below, read “Wonderful Things: One Giant Fake, and the Show It Inspired”, where writer and musician Kit Goldstein Grant reflects on The Giant Hoax. You can also download a free PDF that pairs the essay with short, classroom-ready activities for students.
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Wonderful Things: One Giant Fake, and the Show It Inspired
Kit Goldstein Grant
I grew up in upstate NY, not too far from The Farmer’s Museum in Cooperstown. We visited multiple times when I was a kid, and the high point was always the Cardiff Giant, a giant stone figure of a man, sometimes displayed at the museum in a special outdoor circus-style tent replicating the atmosphere of its first discovery and exhibition.
The Cardiff Giant was “discovered” in 1869 in Cardiff, NY. William “Stub” Newell dug up a giant stone figure, and claimed it was a prehistoric petrified giant. It drew a huge amount of interest from the public, who argued over whether it was a genuine giant, a historic statue, or simply a fake. It drew so much interest, in fact, that Newell was able to draw in a good income from people who came to see the Giant, and paid an admission fee for the privilege. It drew SO much interest, that eventually P. T. Barnum himself offered to buy the Giant, and, when Newell turned him down, decided to make his own replica and claim that his was the real, original Cardiff Giant. Eventually this resulted in a lawsuit, where the true origins of the Cardiff Giant were revealed in court. An entire fraudulent plot came to light, and a judge finally ruled that “A fake of a fake is no fraud.”
Years later, while doing some research on New York State’s history, I came across this fascinating story, and it brought back childhood memories of seeing the giant himself! I was excited to rediscover this fascinating chapter of American history, and was inspired to write a musical and bring the tale to new audiences!
THE GIANT HOAX is a story about wonder, imagination, and belief, versus science and cold, hard facts… in a world where it’s difficult to tell which is which. When Emily finds out about the “discovery” of the Cardiff Giant, it isn’t just one miraculous revelation - it’s proof that life isn’t as dull and drab as she feared. Everything she’s dreamed of could really exist, and life could be full of all kinds of wonderful things!
Or it could be a hoax, and everyone around her could be trying to scam money from a credulous public. As she witnesses the controversy over the giant, her trust and sense of wonder are tested, and to keep her buoyant spirit intact she is forced to reconcile difficult truths with her belief in wonderful things.
This show has a lot of history in it, but also a lot of imagination. Some of the details are real, some completely invented. And I’d like to confess to one huge factual error in the script - as an audience member once came up and told me after a performance, there is something I got wrong: In a lyric, Emily and the Giant sing, “Imaginary friends are better than ice cream!” As this audience member informed me, that is incorrect: nothing is better than ice cream.