Better Late Than Never - A Post About Amazing Women Playwrights

I guess that 2019 has been the year of lazy blogging from me.  Here's hoping that 2020 will wake my brain back up.  I've recently seen two plays that kick some serious butt and they're both written by women.  So let's celebrate!

The day after Thanksgiving, I went with a beautiful gal pal to see Lauren Gunderson's The Half-Life of Marie Curie.  It's playing at the Minetta Lane Theatre as part of their Audible Theater series - plays are being presented on stage and also being turned into audiobooks.  I've already seen two in this series: Chisa Hutchinson's Proof of Love and Isaac Gomez's the way she spoke, and I greatly enjoyed them both.  I was thrilled to see another one of Lauren's plays - she's one of the most produced playwrights in America, but for some reason her plays don't always make it to NYC.  I enjoyed earlier productions of her plays I And You and Bauer, so I was really looking forward to this play.  I should also mention that I worked with Gunderson briefly many years ago and find her to be a delight.  So all signs pointed towards my enjoying the evening.

You bet I enjoyed it - it did not disappoint in the least!  I found The Half-Life of Marie Curie to be completely engrossing, with humor and pathos and science and passion.  It was just grand.  I'm embarrassed to say I didn't know much about Marie Curie's private life and I didn't know about Hertha Ayrton at all, but you can bet I started to learn more about them after seeing this play!

photo credit: Joan Marcus

A play about intelligent women scientists who won't allow the world to define them by men is just in my wheelhouse at the moment.  Having these women be smart, funny, romantic, and supportive was just icing on the cake.  Plus, Kate Mulgrew, as Hertha, and Francesca Faridany, as Marie, were both incredible, with beautiful chemistry (ha!) and incredible timing with this beautiful dialogue.  There was one stretch of dialogue that was just surpassingly beautiful about the joy of science and of 'proof.'  Gorgeous.  The play excellently educated and entertained throughout the evening - as soon as it was over, my beautiful gal pal and I said "We have to come back!"  There was so much to hear and enjoy - I'm glad the play has been made into an audiobook and can be listened to at any time, but watching the interaction between these two wonderful characters (and actresses) make it a must-see as well.  Get to the Minetta Lane Theatre, everyone.

One of the most celebrated, and neglected, woman playwrights in history is the late, great Maria Irene Fornes.  I talked about seeing the recent documentary about her, The Rest I Make Up and how I've read most of her plays but rarely see one.  Fefu and her Friends is considered one of her masterpieces and it is finally having a NY revival at Theatre for a New Audience.  Fefu really defies description - it is a play about women in a really singular way.  It's surreal, deconstructed, and used an early form of "environmental" staging.  In its original production, directed by Fornes herself, the production was performed in a Soho loft and after the first scene, it split the audience into four groups, who watched four separate scenes, in different rooms, up close and personally.  Theatre for a New Audience has replicated that experience - the audience sits in the standard theater format for the first scene where we're introduced to the characters and their situations, then we were split into four groups (I was in the green group) to watch four scenes in other locations in the theater.  After those four scenes, we came back together in the standard theater seats for the last scene.

photo credit: Gerry Goodstein

Like I said, this play rather defies description.  I feel as if trying to tell you 'about' the play will ruin your experience there.  There's a story, of course (the women have come together to discuss a fundraiser for arts education), but there's sort of no real plot.  We're learning about these women and how they exist in the world and with each other.  It's about these women, but also about how all women are forced to fend for themselves throughout their lives.  There are fantastical elements, domestic scenes, love thwarted and love rekindled. Some dialogue is achingly profound, and some is startlingly mundane.  Just like life.  The actresses have a great rapport and interact beautifully with each other.  The sets and costumes are divine and the care with which the show was directed is sublime.  From a purely technical standpoint, it must have been so difficult to get the timing of the four simultaneous scenes right - characters wander in and out of each other's stories at precisely the right moments.  I loved being able to hear all of the scenes at the same time - the repetition just heightened my enjoyment of each scene.  Well, for one incredible scene, we wore headsets so we could hear a character whose room was below the stage.  It was incredibly surreal and moving at the same time.

I guess I have a couple of quibbles: I will say that I found a couple of the actresses wanting, I might've been vaguely uneasy with the way disability was handled, and I was unfortunately extremely physically uncomfortable through much of the environmental staging.  I thought I had bought a 'seated' ticket, which would've allowed me to sit through all four scenes, but I guess I didn't.  I sat on a cushion on the ground for my first scene, which was a little uncomfortable, so I decided to stand for the second scene.  By the third scene, my back was in spasms, and I actually cheated and took a seat for the fourth scene (sorry to whoever was supposed to be sitting there - it stayed empty long enough for me to fall into it).  I would love to go back and try to experience the play again, but only if I could sit throughout.  I regret that my bad feet won't allow me to enjoy the play the way Fornes wanted me to, but I long to luxuriate again in that strange and wonderful world she created - I can only hope that other producers/theater companies are smart enough to take a chance and share more of her work with the world.  I beg you all to seek out these old and new plays, by and about women, to remind the powers-that-be that we all need to hear all of the voices in this great big beautiful theater world of ours.