Tags
#ReadingForParity, Americana, Bathsheba Doran, Female empowerment, Female Playwrights, Gender Parity, Nest, Susanna Cox
I wanted to read an Americana themed play over the July Fourth weekend. I ended up choosing the play Nest by Bathsheba Doran because I was fascinated (and horrified) by the subject matter: an indentured servant becomes impregnated by her married master and murders her own baby. Ironically, Bathsheba Doran is actually British not American. Nonetheless, she captured the experience of nineteenth century frontier American psyche brilliantly and evocatively.
One of the most interesting aspects of Nest is the play’s structure. It is divided into two parts; the first of which is about fifty pages and told in a fairly realistic style. The second part is substantially shorter- only about twenty pages long- and functions almost like a piece of music, broken up into three movements. In the author notes at the top of the play, Bathsheba Doran states that these “three movements require a fluid expression of time and space. The intent is impressionistic not realistic.” I love the word “impressionistic”, perhaps because it brings to mind the glorious paintings of late nineteenth century France, lily pads and haystacks and cathedrals bathed in hazy, exquisite light. The idea of an impressionistic theatrical experience, in which the atmosphere and the emotional reaction to the story is of more significance than literal concrete plot details, is a wonderful, exciting notion. It reminded me that plays are meant to be encountered through multiple senses, to be seen, heard, felt, etc, not merely to be read on a page. It is the reader’s responsibility to engage imaginatively with the printed material, aware that the world of the play transcends words.
At any rate, Nest begins with Susanna, the indentured servant mentioned above, masturbating. She is caught by her master, Jacob (this is before their affair) and immediately denies what she was doing. Jacob promises not to tell anyone. However, this exchange could be perceived as the catalyst for later events in the play. If one is to buy into the stereotypical nineteenth century notion that women are either saints or whores, Jacob has now witnessed Susanna engaging in somewhat sexual behavior; he can no longer think of her as sexually pure and therefore she is available to him in a way she had not been previously. Such rationalization, terrible and skewed as it is by contemporary standards, is dangerously still in effect today. Contemporary society’s language (including slut shaming and the vocabulary of rape discourse) implies a narrow understanding and limited acceptance of women as sexual beings. As Susanna says later in the play, looking back upon her actions:
“If there is a God he won’t like me. I did everything wrong. Shouldn’t have touched that man… Wasn’t supposed to touch myself either. Shouldn’t have done that. Felt good though. Got to be a habit. Seems like I’d feel God, just for a second, end of my finger. Meant something to me.”
Such a statement could easily come from a young girl experiencing a sexual awakening in one of the many repressed parts of the country today, trying to reconcile her desires with the social mores of her community.
Susanna’s story is not only told only through her behavior and dialogue as she interacts with her master and mistress, it is also told through hallucinations of Daniel Boone and through the parallel story of Joe, a young writer who strives to be the first great American poet. Their stories intersect when Joe is assigned to write a ballad about her infanticide and hanging (though she and Joe don’t actually ever meet). Joe represents the burgeoning mass media obsession in American culture. He aspires to be a great writer but he ultimately plagiarizes most of his ballad from the Ballad of Henry Finch. No one seems to notice or care, and every copy of Joe’s ballad is sold.
One of my favorite lines in the play occurs when Joe tries to get past the prison chaplain in order to interview Susanna for his ballad. The chaplain tells Joe that he is not a real poet because “the poet hears the music of the spheres and writes it down and is seldom paid enough to keep him in new neckties, sir!” As in A Lifetime Burning and Sex With Strangers, the relationship between an artist’s integrity vs. the lure of popular culture’s consumerism is explored and deconstructed.
Artistic integrity is not the only common theme I’ve noticed in many of these plays. It’s also worth noting that in the five weeks in which I’ve been reading and blogging for my parity project, I’ve read five plays by fantastic female playwrights and all five plays have had female protagonists- complex, fascinating woman who are incredibly noble and also incredibly flawed, super strong but deeply vulnerable. If one randomly selects five plays by contemporary male writers, I highly doubt that the results would be the same. In fact, let’s examine some well regarded plays from the recent 2014-2015 theater season: all four of the 2015 Tony nominees in the best play category were written by men and featured male protagonists (Curious Incident, Disgraced, Hand to God, Wolf Hall) as did the winner of the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for Drama (Between Riverside and Crazy). Clearly the parity gap indicates a lack of stories about, as well as a lack of plays by, women. How fortunate we are that contemporary female playwrights are working to close the gap and fix the situation. Let’s keep supporting their work and #ReadingForParity.
Click here to read #ReadingForParity Week 4: Sex With Strangers by Laura Eason