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The American Century Theater production of Trifles and Suppressed Desires

From February 23 to March 24, 2007, The American Century Theater (TACT) of Arlington, Virginia produced two Susan Glaspell works, Trifles and Suppressed Desires, as part of a bill of seven one-act plays written by American women dramatists from around the Prohibition era.  The one-acts, presented under the title "Drama Under the Influence," reflects TACT’s mission of "presenting great, important, and neglected plays of the Twentieth Century."  In addition to the Glaspell plays, other short plays on the bill included Sophie Treadwell’s Eye of the Beholder, Gertrude Stein’s Photograph: a Play in Five Acts, Dorothy Parker’s Here We Are, Eulalie Spence’s Hot Stuff, and Rita Wellman’s For All Time. 

The bill of one-acts appears to have been the brainchild of TACT Director Steven Scott Mazzola, who assembled the plays in conjunction with Lillian Hellman biographer Deborah Martinson.  In program notes for the production, Artistic Director Jack Marshall spoke of the plays as "testaments to determination, courage and skill" by women dramatists marginalized in their time.  "For it is virtually certain," Marshall adds, "that had our culture [. . .] cultivated the abundant supply of nascent female playwrights with the same attention and resources lavished on their male counterparts, the theatrical legacy from the 1920s and '30s would have been twice as rich as it is."

Mazzola employed an ensemble of eleven actors (eight women and three men), with each actor playing three separate roles throughout the various plays.  All works were produced on a simple raised stage containing a few levels and an open floor-level forestage; costumes were often realistically detailed from the period while setting and props tended toward selective suggestion.  Mazzola interspersed the various "acts" of Stein’s Photograph between some of the plays to serve as a unifying motif.  Reviewing the production for the website DC Theatre Scene, Deborah Minter Jackson wrote that "TACT has shown that digging through the old dusty attic of America’s theater history can unearth some amazing forgotten treasures. [. . . ] The early voices of feminine identity emerging through this period and contained in these pieces are painstakingly real, refreshing, and quite engaging."

Glaspell’s Trifles, the second play on the bill, received a simple, heartfelt rendering by Mazzola and cast.  Perhaps the most unusual feature of the staging was the nontraditional casting of Tanera Hutz, a highly effective African-American actress, in the role of Mrs. Peters (the nontraditional casting of some white actors in Spence’s one-act proved less successful).  Critic Jackson termed Trifles "a masterpiece," and Doug Krentzlin for Examiner.com found the play "by far, the most effective" of those produced.  Susan Berlin, writing for TalkingBroadway.com, showed that much work is still needed in resuscitating Glaspell’s reputation by referring to the production of Trifles as an "interesting discovery."

Glaspell and George Cram Cook’s Suppressed Desires rounded out the bill, followed only by a brief coda from Stein’s Photograph.  Oddly, TACT’s playbill does not credit Cook with co-authorship and slightly misrepresents the title as Suppressed Desire.  Nevertheless, the play was performed with broad gusto by Mary McGowan, William Aitken, and Jennifer B. Robison, and the playfulness of the early twentieth-century satire clearly still resonated, evoking frequent and long laughter throughout.  Krentzlin found the play "a hilarious send-up of Freudian psychoanalysis" and the critic for Alexandria’s Del Ray Sun termed it "deliciously sardonic."  Trey Graham of the Washington City Paper offered perhaps the most succinct and memorable response: "Glaspell’s head-shrink play is a riot."

TACT dramaturg Andy White organized a post-show seminar on March 17^th with prominent scholars associated with the produced playwrights.  The seminar, initially suggested by Glaspell Society member J. Ellen Gainor, included Sarah Bay-Cheng (Stein scholar), Kathy Perkins (Spence), Jerry Dickey (Treadwell), White and director Mazzola.  Gainor began the seminar with information on Glaspell and the background to Trifles and Suppressed Desires.  

Photographs and reviews of this production may be found under the "News and Reviews" section of the TACT website: www.americancentury.org/index.html  A detailed audience guide to the plays may also be found on this website under the "Essays and Events" section.

Submitted by Jerry Dickey, University of Arizona