Phyl

PHYL is the story of Phyllis Chester, a passionate, feisty young woman desperate to break through the barriers that confine her, eager to find excitement, pleasure and happiness.

Cicely Hamilton (1872-1952) was an actor, an author and a crusader for women’s rights who believed that true progress requires recognizing woman “as a responsible human being with an individuality and interests of her own.” She wrote several plays tackling social issues.  But it was DIANA OF DOBSON’S that caught London’s eye and heart with its light touch and romantic bent in spite of its consideration of ‘serious issues.’  First performed in London in 1908, the play was “accepted as a true picture of the shop-assistant’s life,” to quote from a 1908 press clipping that, “convinced people that something should be done about it.”

On Friday, October 23rd at 7 PM, Mint will present a reading of DIANA OF DOBSON’S, introduced by J. Ellen Gainor of Cornell University, who suggested the play to us in 2001.

Days to Come

Lillian Hellman’s second play, Days to Come, is a family drama set against the backdrop of labor strife in a small Ohio town which threatens to tear apart both town and family. “It’s the story of innocent people on both sides who are drawn into conflict and events far beyond their comprehension,” Hellman said in an interview before Days to Come opened in 1936. “It’s the saga of a man who started something he cannot stop…”

She was “very full of the most miraculous kind of contradictions,” observed Jane Fonda on playing Lillian Hellman (1905-1984). Hellman persistently spoke her mind as one of America’s most celebrated playwrights and controversial icons. Hailed as a “dramatist of extraordinary strength and skill” (John Chapman, The New York Daily News), Hellman pursued questions of truth and deception, integrity and complicity throughout her life and plays. Drawing from melodrama’s conflicts between good and evil, Hellman created characters of textured moral ambiguity, including the indelible Regina Giddens of The Little Foxes.

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