Sunday, April 28, 2019

Play a Day: Nutshell

C. Denby Swanson
For Sunday I read Nutshell by C. Denby Swanson and available at New Play Exchange.

The word theater derives from the Greek for to behold, or "seeing place."

The character based on the true life individual Frances Glessner Lee informs us "the word autopsy derives from the Greek for seeing oneself."

Swanson's Gothic investigation of this near-forgotten mother of forensic investigation is rich with gallows humor, presenting an unreliable narrator whose live was dedicated to making the unseen seen.

The stories we tell about women, true and imagined, are about controlling women, their behavior, they are treated as symbols, not people, in order to mold their behavior. This is true of our folk tales, as well as our modern television procedural dramas.

It is also true of the stories we tell about people of color, though, as is the case with the violence against women forever captured in the crime scene dollhouse dioramas painstaking crafted by our protagonist, these injustices are hiding in plain sight.

I have read twenty-plays in twenty-eight days, four solid weeks of play-reading. Each day I meet a new playwright, and there are so many I have not yet experienced. It is a great joy to indulge in the work of fellow writers.

Tomorrow night we begin rehearsal for King Lear at the Beck Center. Tuesday I will close the month with a thirtieth play. On Wednesday I will resume my daily ritual of writing at five each morning.

Who should I read tomorrow?

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