You don’t want to miss ‘A Bold Stroke for a Husband’ with Theater In The Open!

Frances is proud to have directed Theater in the Open’s 2024 summer mainstage production of A Bold Stroke for a Husband in partnership with Hedgepig Ensemble Theatre’s Expand the Canon Initiative. This production will be performed in Maudslay State Park where Theater in the Open holds artistic residency before touring to Historic New England properties across the region. Tickets can be reserved at https://www.theaterintheopen.org/boldstroke

Check out Frances’ directors note below:

In the summer of 2019, I was fortunate enough to join the Theater in the Open family when cast in TITO’s production of The Tempest. As a student in Boston, far from my home state of Texas, I realized how much I craved a supportive artistic community outside of the rigors of my conservatory studies. Theater in the Open became that community for me, and more. I fell deeply in love with the beauty of Maudslay State Park, and the power of accessible outdoor theatre. And in the fall of 2023 I was honored to join the Theater in the Open staff as Artistic Associate. TITO Artistic Director, Teddy, and I have had many conversations over the past year about the company’s relationship with “the canon” and “the classics”. There is a reason that Theater in the Open’s 45 years of production history have consistently been pulled from of these categories. Shakespeare, the Greeks, last summer’s Oscar Wilde; these texts have timeless themes, and have an unparalleled command of language and imagery, but the perspective from which they are written is narrow. If we define the canon as, the group of books, poems, plays, etc., that we consider to be most important, works that stand up as examples of what great art can be, why then are they only ever written by men? Surely there have been women throughout the ages who were writing great theatre? Where are those pieces in the canon? That is where Expand the Canon comes in. Expand the Canon is an initiative run by Brooklyn based Hedgepig Ensemble. Their mission is to make “classical” works written by women more accessible for producers to find, actively helping to expand the list of what we consider to be canonical. A Bold Stroke for a Husband comes to Theater in the Open as a direct result of Hedgepig Ensemble’s work, and we are forever grateful to them. Hannah Cowley was a force to be reckoned with. Born in 1743, the daughter of a bookkeeper, she was incredibly well read and a frequent visitor to the theatre. After one particular trip to the theatre, she said to her husband, “Why, I could write as well!” And well, she did. A Bold Stroke for a Husband plays off of the plot of Shakespeare’s Taming of the Shrew, and makes direct and indirect reference to just about every other notable Elizabethan and Greek classic. To me, A Bold Stroke for a Husband is a powerfully queer play. It runs against the stream. It explores femme strength, relationship, and agency all while being written in an age with powerful restrictions on women and heavy regulations on commercial theatre. This is the women’s story. I hope in watching our production you laugh out loud, feel both deep joy and deep sadness, and cheer as the women of this play fight to take back their power in any way they can.

With love, Frances Hellums (she/her)