“There’s a major rediscovery at the Mint Theater Company and what else is new?”1 wrote Peter Filichia of our production of Hazel Ellis’ WOMEN WITHOUT MEN. A workplace drama laced with biting humor, WOMEN WITHOUT MEN is set in the teacher’s lounge of a private girls’ boarding school in Ireland in the 1930s. The play explores the clash of conflicting natures and petty competitions that erupt amongst the school’s cloistered teaching staff.
Hazel Ellis began her theatrical career in the 1930s as a member of the acting ensemble of the Gate Theatre in Dublin. She went on to write two plays for the company, including WOMEN WITHOUT MEN which was produced at the Gate in 1938. Despite acclaim, the play was never published or revived—until we produced the play’s belated American premiere at New York City Center Stage II.
“Ellis, an Irish playwright who attended a school much like Malyn Park, is expert in depicting the minutiae of relations among the women, the use of pet names without pet feelings, the flimsy loyalties and simmering jealousies,”2 wrote The New York Times. David Barbour of Lighting and Sound America called WOMEN WITHOUT MEN “a sharply observant comedy-drama filled with crackling ironies, a craftily worked-out mystery, and an astringently unsentimental point of view… this production shows the Mint doing what it does best: finding long-lost works that remain remarkably stageworthy today.”3
Notably, our production featured an all-female cast of eleven, as well as an all-female design team. WOMEN WITHOUT MEN was nominated for two 2016 Lucille Lortel Awards: Outstanding Revival and Outstanding Costume Design.
By Maya Cantu
The author of two “remarkably fine” plays marked by their “subtle characterization” (The Tatler) and “delicacy of treatment” (The Dublin Opinion), Hazel Ellis cut a bright swath through the Irish theatre, during her brief career as a playwright. Starting as an actress with the Gate Theatre, Ellis enjoyed great successes with her richly observed ensemble dramas Portrait in Marble (1936) and Women Without Men (1938), before virtually disappearing from the Dublin stage at the age of thirty.
The daughter of Arthur B. Ellis and his wife Florence, Hazel Beatrice Ellis was born in 1909 in Rathmines, a middle-class South Dublin neighborhood where her father worked as a solicitor. As a teenager, she attended the French School of Bray, in suburban Dublin. A private girls’ boarding school respected for the quality of its liberal arts and musical education, strictly run by its small female staff, the French School later supplied Ellis with the imaginative basis for Women Without Men. After graduating from the French School, Ellis attended Trinity College. “A young, attractive, golden haired girl” (as described by The Evening Mail), the soft-spoken Ellis blossomed as an actress with Trinity’s Elizabethan Society Players, playing Ophelia in Hamlet.
In 1929, Ellis became a company member of Dublin’s Gate Theatre. Earning particularly strong praise for her comic acting, Ellis appeared in supporting roles in a wide variety of plays at the Gate: ranging from The Cherry Orchard and Denis Johnston’s Expressionist satire The Old Lady Says No!, to Mary Manning’s comedy of manners Youth’s the Season and a tongue-in-cheek revival of the melodrama Sweeney Todd.
In 1936, Ellis stunned the Dublin theatre world with her emergence as a playwright. As an Evening Mail profile described her, “Miss Ellis is so quiet and unassuming that nobody would have expected that beneath it all, she was quietly arranging the substance of her play.” Portrait in Marble traced Lord Byron’s relationships with his wife and his mistress, Lady Caroline Lamb, as well as his friendship with the Irish poet Thomas Moore. The period drama impressed critics as the twenty-five year old actress’s first effort: “Portrait in Marble has none of the patchiness and uncertainty that one associates with a first attempt…its admirable clearness and skill might be envied by a more experienced playwright,” observed The Irish Times.
Ellis continued to develop her craft with the innovative, all-female Women Without Men. Set in the fictional Malyn Park Private School, Women Without Men joined Christa Winsloe’s 1930 German play Mädchen in Uniform (or Girls in Uniform; produced at the Gate in 1934) and Lillian Hellman’s The Children’s Hour in the popular 1930s’ genre of girls’ school dramas, while setting off Ellis’s distinctive voice as a chronicler of Dublin women. The Evening Herald observed, “Clever characterization, witty dialogue, and a serious vein running through six scenes to make Women Without Men one of the outstanding success of the present season at the Gate Theatre.”
Seemingly on the verge of a major playwriting career, Ellis stepped behind the closed curtains of domestic life—though her two marriages were turbulent. Her love for the theater remained intact, however. She continued to perform in local productions in Dalkey and Mill Hill, London, where she eventually relocated. After a long illness, she died at the Royal Free Hospital in Hampstead, on April 10th, 1986.
PANEL DISCUSSION: WOMEN WORKING IN THEATER (WITH AND WITHOUT MEN)
Featuring the creative team of Women Without Men and moderated by Ludovica Villar-Hauser
A recent study by the League of Professional Theatre Women found that less than 35% of the major creative jobs Off and Off-Off-Broadway during the 2014-2015 season were held by women. In this panel discussion, the all-female creative team of Women Without Men will discuss their careers as working women in the theater, as well as their unique experience working together on this production. The panel will feature Jenn Thompson (Director), Vicki R. Davis (Sets), Martha Hally (Costumes), Traci Klainer Polimeni (Lights), Jane Shaw (Sound), Amy Stoller (Dialects & Dramaturgy), and Judy Bowman (Casting)—and will be moderated by Ludovica Villar-Hauser (Founder of Works by Women & Co-Secretary of the League of Professional Theatre Women).
A SCHOOL FOR LADIES: EDUCATION IN 1930s IRELAND
Maureen O. Murphy, Hofstra University
Maureen Murphy is Professor of Curriculum and Teaching, and Co-Director of the undergraduate Irish Studies minor at Hofstra University. Professor Murphy is a past president of the American Conference for Irish Studies and a past chair of the International Association for the Study of Irish Literatures. Her discussion will provide social and historical context for the play, and will focus on the history of education in Ireland.
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HAZEL ELLIS AND DUBLIN’S GATE THEATRE
Chris Morash, Trinity College Dublin
Chris Morash returns to the Mint for his fifth year. He currently holds post as the Seamus Heaney Professor of Irish Writing at Trinity College Dublin. He is co-editor of Mint’s publication Teresa Deevy Reclaimed: Volume I, as well as the forthcoming Volume II. While Dublin’s Abbey Theatre was Ireland’s best known theatre internationally in the early years of the twentieth century, some of the most interesting theatre in Ireland in the 1930s was actually produced at the Gate Theatre in Dublin—where Women Without Men was first performed in 1938. This talk will look at the theatre, the people, and the ideas that formed the context for that first production.
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WOMEN WITHOUT THEATRE? IRISH FEMALE PIONEERS OF THE 1930s
Chris Morash, Trinity College Dublin
The Irish Constitution of 1937 was clear about the role of women in society: “The State recognises that by her life within the home, woman gives to the State a support without which the common good cannot be achieved.” And yet, in spite of this, women played an important part in the theatre culture of the time. This talk looks at some of these female pioneers—including some who were associated with the Gate Theatre—and will explore the issues faced by women in Irish theatre, both then and today.
THE 1916 RISING AND THE IRISH THEATRE
Chris Morash, Trinity College Dublin
At the American Irish Historical Society
991 5th Ave. (Between 80th and 81st Streets)
The year 2016 marks the 100th anniversary of the 1916 Rising, a key moment in the history of modern Ireland. Many of the key figures involved in the Easter Rising were also actively involved in the theatre, whether as playwrights, actors or directors. This special, off-site lecture will look at some of the ways in which the Irish theatre helped shape the events the culminated in Easter Week, 1916—to the point that it becomes possible to ask if we can understand the Rising itself as a (deadly serious) form of theatre.
This talk will be followed by a reception with light refreshments. Seating is very limited. For reservations please call 212.315.0231.
