{"id":814911,"date":"2024-12-26T02:21:16","date_gmt":"2024-12-26T08:21:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2024\/12\/26\/kate-hamill-presents-a-feminist-expression-of-raw-emotion-in-her-latest-play-the-light-and-the-dark\/"},"modified":"2024-12-26T02:21:16","modified_gmt":"2024-12-26T08:21:16","slug":"kate-hamill-presents-a-feminist-expression-of-raw-emotion-in-her-latest-play-the-light-and-the-dark","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2024\/12\/26\/kate-hamill-presents-a-feminist-expression-of-raw-emotion-in-her-latest-play-the-light-and-the-dark\/","title":{"rendered":"Kate Hamill presents a feminist expression of raw emotion in her latest play \u201cThe Light and the Dark\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"
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NEW YORK<\/strong> \u2013 The inspiration for Kate Hamill\u2019s latest play came from across centuries and the planet.<\/p>\n

The actor-playwright was honeymooning in Italy in 2020 when she walked into the Uffizi Gallery in Florence and spotted a painting by pioneering Baroque painter Artemisia Gentileschi created around 1620. The art immediately stirred more art.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was standing in front of this painting, just like crying and shaking for like 20 minutes. And then I was like, \u2018I\u2019m going to write a play about this woman,\u2019\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

The result is \u201cThe Light and the Dark\u201d \u2014 a Primary Stages production at 59E59 Theatres \u2014 which looks at the hard but inspiring life of Gentileschi, who created bold works despite a society keen on keeping her down. Hamill calls the play a \u201cfeminist primal scream.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI am disheartened by how extremely relevant this play is right now,\u201d Hamill says. \u201cMuch of the same things that Artemisia Gentileschi was dealing with then are still true now.\u201d<\/p>\n

A symbol for courageous women<\/p>\n

Gentileschi rebelled against the male-dominated art world \u2014 even using herself as a nude model \u2014 and has lately become a symbol of courageous women for testifying in court, even while being tortured, against a prominent painter who raped her. \u201cPlease don\u2019t let her give up \u2014 she is a survivor,\u201d Hamill writes in the play\u2019s notes. <\/p>\n

Hamill \u2014 consistently among the most produced playwrights in America \u2014 not only wrote the work, but she also stars as Gentileschi, nightly reliving the traumas and the betrayals but also the triumphs of her sister-in-art.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was important to me as a female artist to put my own body in the line of the service of a female artist who used the power of her body to say something,\u201d she says. <\/p>\n

\u201cI felt like if what I need to do to get survivors\u2019 stories heard is take off all my clothes and scream in the middle of off-Broadway, then that\u2019s what I\u2019m going to do.\u201d<\/p>\n

Painting of Judith influences play\u2019s final speech<\/p>\n

The painting in Italy that stirred so much in Hamill was Gentileschi\u2019s Judith Slaying Holofernes, which depicts the Biblical story of Judith, who saved her people by beheading the Assyrian general Holofernes.<\/p>\n

It came at a time when Hamill was disheartened by #MeToo stories at home and wondered how \u2014 or even if \u2014 she could continue as a feminist playwright.<\/p>\n

\u201cI swear to you, I felt this woman reach through time and reach into that room and slap me up across the face and go \u2018Snap out of it! You have a voice. You have privilege. You\u2019re going to let those guys beat you? Get louder, get bolder!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Hamill\u2019s husband, actor-director Jason O\u2019Connell, recalls seeing her transfixed in front of the painting. \u201cIt was like she was seized,\u201d he says, adding that her stillness and the light on her face made her look like a painting herself. \u201cI just watched her commune with it for a while and it was very moving.\u201d (Hamill soon ordered more than a dozen books about Gentileschi that were waiting for her on her return home.)<\/p>\n

The painting depicts Gentileschi and her maid plunging a sword into their enemy, inspiring the play\u2019s final powerful speech: \u201cEvery daughter of mothers who ever sees this work\/Will know she is not alone\/She will see what it means\/To survive, despite the hands at your throat.\u201d<\/p>\n

The play has plenty of signature Hamill touches \u2014 strong women, humor and an encouragement to mix in modern elements despite whatever period the play is set. \u201cThe Light and the Dark\u201d has actors in jeans beneath Renaissance silhouettes, and Hamill kept her piercings in.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe wanted it to feel like we are gesturing at a time that is both back then and now, because I\u2019m going to argue all of this story could happen now,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

Envisioning a more egalitarian future<\/p>\n

Hamill has built a reputation as a foremost adapter of novels to the stage, including dust-blowing-off versions of \u201cVanity Fair,\u201d \u201cMansfield Park,\u201d \u201cThe Scarlet Letter,\u201d \u201cLittle Women\u201d and \u201cPride and Prejudice.\u201d In her \u201cSense and Sensibility,\u201d she added a Greek chorus of gossips to represent social pressures.<\/p>\n

\u201cI come at adaptation from a sort of a new play lens,\u201d she says. \u201cSo, I think of it as a collaboration between myself and an author who\u2019s often currently dead. So, in a way, it\u2019s sort of the same muscle.\u201d<\/p>\n

O\u2019Connell, who often acts alongside his wife, has two roles in the new play \u2014 an art appraiser who testifies against Gentileschi and a court officer who tortures her. \u201cI betray her two different ways in one scene,\u201d he says, turning to his wife: \u201cThe play is just so her. Her voice is so strong.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hamill says she is tapping into the same thing Gentileschi tapped into \u2014 extreme dissatisfaction with how the world is and this feeling that the world could be different.<\/p>\n

\u201cFeminist stories are about envisioning a future that\u2019s more egalitarian for women and men and people who do not identify on that binary. I think there is a healthy proportion of people who really want to live in that world or who want to see the ways in which our current world is not like that world.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n

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NEW YORK \u2013 The inspiration for Kate Hamill\u2019s latest play came from across centuries and the planet. The actor-playwright was honeymooning in Italy in 2020 when she walked into the Uffizi Gallery in Florence and spotted a painting by pioneering Baroque painter Artemisia Gentileschi created around 1620. The art immediately stirred more art. \u201cI was<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":814912,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2872,27027],"tags":[15329,15258],"class_list":{"0":"post-814911","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-hamill","8":"category-presents","9":"tag-hamill","10":"tag-presents"},"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/814911","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=814911"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/814911\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/814912"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=814911"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=814911"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=814911"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}