The Understudy

Play Reading Club: Becky Nurse of Salem
2024-10-28 19:00 - 20:30 (America/Chicago) | The Understudy Coffee and Books, 5531 N Clark St, Chicago, IL, 60640, United States
Each month, we gather to discuss a new, exciting or confounding play that has caught our attention. This month: Becky Nurse of Salem

Join our monthly play reading club! Each month, we gather to discuss a new, exciting or confounding play that has caught our attention. This month, we’re reading BECKY NURSE OF SALEM by Sarah Ruhl
Whether you’re a bona fide theatre nerd, or exploring anew genre for the first time, this club is an excellent opportunity to dive deep into a great piece of writing. Everyone is welcome! Just arrive having already read the play, and our conversation will unfold from there.
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ABOUT THE PLAY
Becky Nurse is an outspoken, sharp-witted tour guide at the Salem Museum of Witchcraft who’s just trying to get by in post-Obama America. She’s also the descendant of Rebecca Nurse, who was infamously executed for witchcraft in 1692—but things have changed for women since then…haven’t they? After losing her job for calling out The Crucible in front of schoolkids, Becky visits a local witch for help. One spell leads to another, and then everything really goes off the rails. A darkly comic play about a woman coming to terms with her family’s legacy and finding her voice in the “lock her up” era.
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ABOUT THE PLAYWRIGHT
Sarah Ruhl is a playwright, poet, and essayist. Her plays include In the Next Room or the Vibrator Play (Pulitzer Prize finalist); The Clean House (Pulitzer Prize finalist, Susan Smith Blackburn Prize); Passion Play (PEN/Laura Pels Award); Letters from Max (based on the book of the same title, with Max Ritvo); and Eurydice, named one of the best productions of the last twenty-five years by the New York Times, and made into an opera for The Metropolitan Opera. Her books include Smile: A Memoir, 100 Essays I Don’t Have Time to Write, and Love Poems in Quarantine. She is the recipient of a MacArthur “Genius” Grant. She currently teaches at the Geffen School of Drama at Yale University. She lives in Brooklyn with her family.
