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lillibetI'm working on a series of posts about the process of reviving our 2006 production of The Margaret Ghost. They will be re-posted over on Brown Paper Tickets, where you can also get tickets for the show. Just click on the "See More About this Producer" link at the left of the page.
The Margaret Ghost has been a very special play for me since I first saw it at sixteen. I had never heard of Margaret Fuller and here was a character that really spoke to me. "Terribly endowed with brains," she was part of the Boys Club of Transcendentalism, challenging stereotypes and breaking into the very male territory of American literature while having to move to Italy to find someone who could also appreciate her as a woman. For a precociously smart teenager with all the usual insecurities, finding a friend across two centuries of history who understood me was nothing short of miraculous.
In 2006, as my sister and I tossed around ideas of what my next show with Theatre@First should be, we remembered The Margaret Ghost and began to look for the script. Suitably intangible, the script had never been published, but we were finally able to track down an email address for the playwright, Carole Braverman, who generously responded by sending me the document.
It was much richer than I had remembered it. Not only was Margaret much more than a sixteen year old had been able to appreciate, but the other characters--Nathaniel Hawthorne and his wife Sophia Peabody, Ralph Waldo Emerson, newspaper pioneer Horace Greeley, and others--were witty and wry and provided antagonists and allies that allowed Margaret to be seen from many angles.
From the talented Theatre@First community, I was able to cast nine fabulous actors and we brought The Margaret Ghost to life that fall. Together we explored Braverman's robust script. Pregnant with our daughter at the time, I found my sympathies gravitating from Margaret's insecurities about her tongue and her looks to her concerns about bringing her work from conception to execution, about bringing a child into a world that--as ever--is beset with unrest and injustice.
I remain very proud of that production. Returning The Margaret Ghost to the stage after more than twenty years and sharing it with our community was a very special moment for me. Many of our audience encountered Fuller for the first time in our theatre and thanked me for the introduction. Others counted Margaret as an old acquaintance, one they were happy to renew through Theatre@First. Many asked me for recommendations of further reading material. Several returned to see the show a second and even third time.
And then the show was over and my daughter was born and I turned to other projects, thinking I was done with The Margaret Ghost. Until May of 2009, when Jessica Lipnack, co-chair of The Margaret Fuller Bicentennial Committee, contacted me to see if we would be interested in reviving our production as part of the year-long series of events the committee were planning and coordinating in honor of the 200th anniversary of Fuller's birth. I contacted my cast and they were all eager to revisit the mid-19th century with me.
So now we begin again, returning to these familiar characters with new experience and insight. I look forward to sharing the journey and its results with you.
The Margaret Ghost has been a very special play for me since I first saw it at sixteen. I had never heard of Margaret Fuller and here was a character that really spoke to me. "Terribly endowed with brains," she was part of the Boys Club of Transcendentalism, challenging stereotypes and breaking into the very male territory of American literature while having to move to Italy to find someone who could also appreciate her as a woman. For a precociously smart teenager with all the usual insecurities, finding a friend across two centuries of history who understood me was nothing short of miraculous.
In 2006, as my sister and I tossed around ideas of what my next show with Theatre@First should be, we remembered The Margaret Ghost and began to look for the script. Suitably intangible, the script had never been published, but we were finally able to track down an email address for the playwright, Carole Braverman, who generously responded by sending me the document.
It was much richer than I had remembered it. Not only was Margaret much more than a sixteen year old had been able to appreciate, but the other characters--Nathaniel Hawthorne and his wife Sophia Peabody, Ralph Waldo Emerson, newspaper pioneer Horace Greeley, and others--were witty and wry and provided antagonists and allies that allowed Margaret to be seen from many angles.
From the talented Theatre@First community, I was able to cast nine fabulous actors and we brought The Margaret Ghost to life that fall. Together we explored Braverman's robust script. Pregnant with our daughter at the time, I found my sympathies gravitating from Margaret's insecurities about her tongue and her looks to her concerns about bringing her work from conception to execution, about bringing a child into a world that--as ever--is beset with unrest and injustice.
I remain very proud of that production. Returning The Margaret Ghost to the stage after more than twenty years and sharing it with our community was a very special moment for me. Many of our audience encountered Fuller for the first time in our theatre and thanked me for the introduction. Others counted Margaret as an old acquaintance, one they were happy to renew through Theatre@First. Many asked me for recommendations of further reading material. Several returned to see the show a second and even third time.
And then the show was over and my daughter was born and I turned to other projects, thinking I was done with The Margaret Ghost. Until May of 2009, when Jessica Lipnack, co-chair of The Margaret Fuller Bicentennial Committee, contacted me to see if we would be interested in reviving our production as part of the year-long series of events the committee were planning and coordinating in honor of the 200th anniversary of Fuller's birth. I contacted my cast and they were all eager to revisit the mid-19th century with me.
So now we begin again, returning to these familiar characters with new experience and insight. I look forward to sharing the journey and its results with you.
