About this item
Highlights
- A wry, innovative reckoning with the legacy of the Salem witch trials from one of America's foremost playwrights.
- About the Author: Sarah Ruhl is a playwright, poet, and essayist.
- 112 Pages
- Drama, Women Authors
Description
About the Book
"A wry, innovative reckoning with the legacy of the Salem witch trials from one of America's foremost playwrights. Becky Nurse is an outspoken, sharp-witted tour guide at the Salem Museum of Witchcraft who's just trying to get by in post-Obama America. She's also the descendant of Rebecca Nurse, who was infamously executed for witchcraft in 1692-but things have changed for women since then...haven't they? After losing her job for calling out The Crucible in front of schoolkids, Becky visits a local witch for help. One spell leads to another, and then everything really goes off the rails. A darkly comic play about a woman coming to terms with her family's legacy and finding her voice in the "lock her up" era. Becky Nurse of Salem received its world premiere at Berkeley Rep in December 2019, in a production directed by Anne Kauffman. The play will receive its New York premiere at Lincoln Center Theater in the fall of 2022"--Book Synopsis
A wry, innovative reckoning with the legacy of the Salem witch trials from one of America's foremost playwrights.Becky Nurse is an outspoken, sharp-witted tour guide at the Salem Museum of Witchcraft who's just trying to get by in post-Obama America. She's also the descendant of Rebecca Nurse, who was infamously executed for witchcraft in
1692--but things have changed for women since then...haven't they? After losing her job for calling out The Crucible in front of schoolkids, Becky visits a local witch for help. One spell leads to another, and then everything really goes off the rails. A darkly comic play about a woman coming to terms with her family's legacy and finding her voice in the "lock her up" era.
Review Quotes
"How could one possibly reflect on both the Salem witch trials and our ongoing opioid crisis and end up with a comedy that's ultimately as heartwarming as it is wacky? Leave it to Sarah Ruhl, whose plays have pondered the odd twists and outsize emotions that shape everyday life with both probing intelligence and whimsy, often through a patently feminist lens...Becky Nurse of Salem makes her plight, and those of so many women like her, as authentic as it is illuminating." --Elysa Gardner, New York Sun
"A fun, smart play." --Vinson Cunningham, New Yorker
"A wildly ambitious denunciation of The Crucible, with its sexualization of women and girls, Becky Nurse of Salem calls out the way women are taken to task for the ills of the world. At turns bracing and beguiling...Ruhl's shimmering insights give this new work some truly bewitching moments." --Karen D'Souza, Mercury News
About the Author
Sarah Ruhl is a playwright, poet, and essayist. Her plays include In the Next Room or the Vibrator Play (Pulitzer Prize finalist); The Clean House (Pulitzer Prize finalist, Susan Smith Blackburn Prize); Passion Play (PEN/Laura Pels Award); Letters from Max (based on the book of the same title, with Max Ritvo); and Eurydice, named one of the best productions of the last twenty-five years by the New York Times, and made into an opera for The Metropolitan Opera. Her books include Smile: A Memoir, 100 Essays I Don't Have Time to Write, and Love Poems in Quarantine. She is the recipient of a MacArthur "Genius" Grant. She currently teaches at the Geffen School of Drama at Yale University. She lives in Brooklyn with her family.