The Lady's Not For Burning

Honorary Producers: Pam and Gresham Riley

The Lady's Not For Burning

by Christopher Fry
directed by Jenny Bennett

Monday, April 8th @ 7PM
The Bluver Theatre at the Drake

                                        "I've never seen a world
               So festering with damnation. I have left
               Rings of beer on every alehouse table
               From the salt sea-coast across half a dozen counties,
               But each time I thought I was on the way
               To a faintly festive hiccup
               The sight of the damned world sobered me up again."

Thomas, a cynical soldier exhausted by the corruption of the world, stumbles into a town in the middle of a frenzied witch-hunt. Despite his world-weariness, Thomas tries (in his own strange way) to save the condemned Jennet by marching into the mayor’s home and demanding to be hanged himself. When the mayor refuses, the soldier goes to greater and greater lengths to be difficult – after all, how ridiculous to refuse to hang a man who wants to be hanged, only to kill a guiltless woman who doesn’t want to die.

Ironic, absurd, and deeply heartfelt, Christopher Fry’s curious rom-com is set “more or less” in 1400s England, and asks the question: in the maelstrom of a world beset by righteous mobs, power-hungry leaders, and terrible violence, what can a single person do? A play of splendid poetry and sheer high spirits.

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DESIGN/PRODUCTION TEAM:
Director: Jenny Bennett

CAST:
Thomas - Eli Lynn
Jennett - Cassandra Alexander
Richard - Anthony Diaz
Alizon - Brittany Onukwugha
Humphrey - Harry Smith
Nicholas - Gabriel Elmore
Margaret - Tai Verley
Hebble Tyson - David Bardeen
Judge Tappercoom - Nathan Foley
Chaplain - Caitlin Collins
Skipps - Bruce Graham

Jenny Bennett - Director
Jenny Bennett is a fourth-generation theatre woman. Directing includes: The Three Musketeers (4 AUDELCO awards), Henry V (3 AUDELCO awards) Off-Broadway at the Classical Theatre of Harlem; Twelfth Night, The Comedy of Errors, King Lear, The Winter's Tale at the American Shakespeare Center; Much Ado About Nothing at Hope Rep (2022 Best Play, BroadwayWorld Michigan); Fun Home at The Renaissance Theatre, Ohio. Kaohsiung, Taiwan directing includes Macbeth, Dangerous Liaisons/ Weixian Guanxi, The 3Penny Opera, Into the Woods. Jenny is on the faculty of AMDA New York. MFA, U of Delaware; BA, UVA. A former SDCF/ Kurt Weill Foundation Fellow, Jenny is a member of AEA, SDC, the Lincoln Center Theater Directors Lab, and is completing certification as a Consent Forward Artist with IDC. Instagram: @jb_jennyb

"The festering corruption of an unjust world feels overwhelming. Mobs get whipped up into thoughtless, righteous frenzy condemning the vulnerable. And the non-factual justifications for all that real damage are patently absurd ... whaddya gonna do?

Witch-hunts happen all the time. Joan of Arc, Salem, Florida. Witch hunts are easy. So simple to make A Villain: just direct the inevitable frustrations of folks who suspect they're working awfully hard for Not Enough onto someone who's visibly Different from the field, and chop that Tall Poppy down. The mob will feel like they've accomplished something, and you'll have avoided their more appropriately placed wrath for upholding systems that actually oppress them. Efficient, really. And round and round we go. Whee!

Christopher Fry wrote The Lady's Not For Burning in 1948, reckoning with the collective horrors of World War II, the shocking violence that real people did to other real people, while a whole bunch of other real people didn't stop it -- what can one person do? I think he wrote this witty, ironic rom-com to find a way to be with those horrors, to process all that trauma, and answer that question."
- Jenny