If there’s one thing I’ve learned about playwriting in the last year, it’s that seeing your work presented in front of an audience and performed by actors is one of the most amazing and also the most terrifying things in the world. I especially enjoy attending workshop of other people’s work because getting a look at what putting a show together and what the writing process looks like for others is fascinating and I personally admire anyone for sharing a work in progress with the (sometimes less than kind) public.
Savage Umbrella recently staged two nights of workshops at Bryant Lake Bowl for Velvet Swing, a work-in-progress about the life of Evelyn Nesbit, a performer who became famous after her husband, Harry Thaw, killed millionaire Stanford White, a patron of Nesbit’s who had also had a sexual relationship with her. Written by Alana Horton and Megan Clark, this workshop performance featuring Nayely Becerra, Antiona Perez, Jessie Scarborough-Ghent, Mickaylee Shaugnessy, and Leslie Vincent and included forty-five minutes of the piece so far. Certain actors played Thaw and White, while the ensemble all became Nesbit in all her complex incarnations.
Because this isn’t a performance, this piece isn’t a review but rather a look at this workshop and what I love about this process. Though the performance was only a small part of what the piece will eventually become, there was a bold look at what sort of story is being told about Nesbit – a look at what it’s like to be a woman, especially a woman who’s considered good-looking in America. Conversations in the talk-back and had by me after the show involved thinking about Nesbit as a sex symbol, someone who has star power and how the cult of fame can be dangerous, how the court room can turn on a young woman and make her the criminal instead of the victim (ie: look at Kesha, every woman involved in campus rape allegations, I could go on), and how women continually struggle between inaccurate dichotomies of being sexual and innocent. This workshop was the perfect thing to lure me into wanting to see more and I can’t wait to see where this work goes. I’m still overwhelmed in admiration for Horton and Clark to share their work with us and I can’t wait to see what comes next.
Gina Musto 