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A Noise Within
“Why I Had to Adapt The Bluest Eye
By Lydia R. Diamond In high school my English teacher, a brilliant woman who saw a writer in me decades before I’d see it in myself, gave me Toni Morrison’s Beloved. I read the whole thing in one sitting, and so much of it went over my head. Looking back, I realize that I protected…
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A Noise Within
Manuel Puig’s Kiss of the Spider Woman: The Gift of Storytelling
By Dr. Miranda Johnson-Haddad, Resident Dramaturg at A Noise Within Manuel Puig’s novel Kiss of the Spider Woman was a critical failure when it was first published in 1976. Yet it has had what one commentator (Isaac Butler, writing in The New Yorker in December 2022) has called “a remarkable afterlife.” Puig himself adapted the…
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A Noise Within
Jessica Kubzansky’s Director’s Note for Othello
For me, Othello is a story about the terrible power of love when it is thwarted. For all its broader social and political messages, this play is also a small, deeply personal story about two men who have battled together, have had each other’s backs, and have been brothers through the wars together. It is…
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A Noise Within
Storytelling and Arts in Prison
At A Noise Within, an important part of our work involves engagement with community organizations whose values align with our own. In setting our production of Man of La Mancha in a modern-day prison facility, director Julia Rodriguez-Elliott hoped to showcase the transforming effect storytelling can have on the lives of prisoners. This spring we developed partnerships…
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A Noise Within
“Every Inch a King”: The Universal and the Human in Shakespeare’s King Lear
Need a refresher on King Lear before the show? Long-time ANW contributing scholar Dr. Miranda Johnson-Haddad gives you a quick historical, psychological, and cultural analysis of Shakespeare’s masterpiece. “Every Inch a King”: The Universal and the Human in Shakespeare’s King Lear By Miranda Johnson-Haddad, Ph.D. Although King Lear has historically been regarded as Shakespeare’s masterpiece, it has…
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A Noise Within
The 1947 “Failure” of Jean Genet’s The Maids
Genet is on record describing The Maids as a “failure.” Why? Christopher Lane, in his article “The Voided Role: On Genet”, supposes that the “failure” of the play is encoded in its message, or we might say, in its poetics…. Lane writes that “Genet’s interest in his characters’ fantasies and identifications interrupts what might seem an obvious oscillation between master and…
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A Noise Within
Jean Genet based The Maids on a real murder case from 1933
Christine and Léa Papin were real-life sisters who came from an abusive, dysfunctional, poor family. As adults, the two were extremely close and may have had an incestuous relationship. They worked as maids for the Lancelin family for many years, but one night in February 1933, they brutally murdered their employer, Madame Lancelin, and her daughter, Genvieve, in their home….
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A Noise Within
Quackery and Medicine in 17th Century France
The Imaginary Invalid references many questionable antiquated medical practices. Learn more about the real-life history of “medicine” in 17th Century France: “We are doctors come to warn you Of the phonies out to harm you Could your guru be a schmuck? If it quacks, then it’s a duck! Your guru scoffs at your queries, And…
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A Noise Within
The Imaginary Invalid: Notes on Names
Enrich your experience of The Imaginary Invalid and discover the fascinating explanations behind the show’s meaningful character names: Argan’s name sounds a little like “argent,” which [in French] means “money.” It also sounds a bit like “Orgon,” a character from another of Molière’s plays whose faith in the titular character, Tartuffe, is comparable to Argan’s faith in doctors. Béline’s name is loosely…
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Production Notes
