Another woman (play)

A 50 year-old actress gives an interview on stage before her opening night. During the conversation, she relives three characters she played on that same stage: a 25 year-old Norwegian housewife in the 1880’s, a 35 year-old single woman from Louisiana in the 1940’s and a 55 year-old married woman from New England, in the 1960’s. 

The Play

“Hold up a mirror to nature”, said Hamlet about the theatre. And indeed, plays have become one of the most important forms of documenting history and depicting life through works that have become classics. But there’s a catch here: most of these classics were written by white men.  And they held up a mirror to whatever they wanted to see.

Mimicking the styles of Henrik Ibsen, Tennessee Williams and Edward Albee, I want to hold up a mirror to  theatre itself. That is, modern western theatre. And in telling the story of an actress who rejected the “standard role of a woman” in life because of the trauma that came from playing it so much on stage, I ask: how has the way women have been portrayed in theatre contributed to empower the patriarchy that we fight so much in our days?

“Another Woman” had its first 20 pages developed in a residency at NTI/O'Neill Theatre Center in March 2019 with director Erin Ortmann.