EMILY SCHWEND
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Texas Plays in British Places

7/7/2018

 
Utility is a deeply Texan play. In fact, the last show I worked on in England was also a deeply Texan play. These scripts seem to appeal to the British, but not, as I feared, because their Southern settings are curiosities, but because the Brits have been able to find common threads and relatable stories. After all, I've always believed that meticulously detailing the world of a play makes it somehow more accessible, even to an audience of outsiders. Specificity allows for universality.

In America, my last two productions were set in the South: suburban Texas and rural Virginia. Both occasionally inspired comments like "Why did she set the play in rural Virginia if it doesn't have to be?" or "Did she choose a red state drawl to bait the liberal elites who will see the show?" The answers to these questions, of course, are always rooted in the unimaginative fact that these are the places where my family still lives and these are the places where I return to negotiate my own worldview. 

But beyond this easy answer, these questions point to a larger issue: Why, especially in New York, do we assume plays set in the South must either speak for the South or serve as a foil for the rest of America?

Perhaps London is so removed from these places, and its audiences have less of the stereotypes and baggage about the South, that Southern
 accents and small-town details can exist on their own terms. It's my experience that the British view America with more of a broad stroke anyway, and the chasm between Texas and New York, say, doesn't loom as large.

Gradiva in Madison Square Park

6/21/2018

 
A new piece for Theatre For One, my favorite project out of everything I do. This one was a nighttime blur, a 3am-haven't-slept-for-20-hours idea, a musing on memory and gods and resilience and fear.

You think I don’t see her face in your face or his eyes in your eyes, but I do. I see all of the lives that had to fall into place to open your eyes on this earth. I see all of the faces that came before you, and they are scrambling to stay in your shadow as you move through the days of your life. I see them trailing behind you, watching you wend your way through the world and they catch my eye because they know I can see them, they reach out to me and they say, “Gradiva help us, Gradiva stay, Gradiva wait” because they know I’ve been to hell and back and they know I’ve seen what they fear and they think I can help them, they think if I help you then I can help them, but.
​

​The show has already come and gone, much like Gradiva herself. But perhaps, and for the first time with a T41 character, I'll bring her back in another script and in another place.


T41 at Madison Square Park
Delirious Matter by Diana Al-Hadid


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Q&A with the Orange Tree Theatre

6/8/2018

 
Is there room for hope in a play like Utility?

This question gives me pause, because the phrasing implies that Utility is a hopeless play, which I don’t believe at all. I realize the question is largely about how Amber and her family live paycheck to paycheck and about the exhausting, gendered responsibility of maintaining a house and home, but Utility is not a play about social class or feminism alone. Ultimately, it is about a woman who is reckoning with her own lost identity, who is in love with an unreliable man, and who is fighting to make life happier and easier for her family. To question the existence of hope in this play feels endemic of the male gaze, through which women can be only tragic if they aren’t completely happy, as if suffering is the only thing about them that is stage-worthy.




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​Read the full Q&A


Utility at the Orange Tree Theatre
Richmond, UK
June 1 - July 7
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Tickets

UK Premiere of Utility

5/18/2018

 
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Utility will have its UK premiere next month at the Orange Tree Tree Theatre. The play tells the story of Amber, a young woman in Texas struggling to make ends meet, and presents a slice of life that reflects the underbelly of American capitalism.
​
Orange Tree Theatre in Richmond
June 1 - July 7
Directed by Caitlin McLeod
Featuring Robyn Addison, Jackie Clune, Robert Lonsdale, and Matt Sutton
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Tickets


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  • Home
  • About
  • Selected Plays
    • Utility
    • The Other Thing
    • Take Me Back
    • Halfway
    • South of Settling
    • Splinters
  • Press
  • News
  • Contact