Metropolitan Playhouse
Presents
The Virtual Playhouse Fall Season

A Screened Reading
of
A WOMAN’S HONOR

Written by SUSAN GLASPELL
Directed by RACHAEL LANGTON

Featuring
VIENA AIELLO, KATHY CHRISTAL, CHRISTINA ESKRIDGE, MAGGIE ANNE GILLETTE, ZARRA KAAHN, JACOB SHIPLEY, REBECCA SIMPSON-WALLACK, DANIELLE STANEK, & LAWRENCE WINSLOW.

Virtual Settings: RIFKA MILDER

Talkback Guest: J. ELLEN GAINOR, CORNELL UNIVERSITY

September 26, 2020 8 p.m.

www.metropolitanplayhouse.org/virtualplayhouse

Author SUSAN GLASPELL hits the social absurdity nail on the head once again with this comedy. It’s 1917 and The Prisoner has been sentenced to death…unless he can produce an alibi. He refuses. He was with a lady and his ethics prohibit him from disclosing her identity. It would ruin her honor! Unthinkable, even with his life on the line.

While he waits in the jailhouse conference room, his lawyer makes a confession. He placed an ad in the paper telling the sad tale of the doomed young man and pleaded for the woman in question to step forward and save his life. The Prisoner is shocked, but what’s done is done. A door creaks open and The Shielded One enters. She is willing to testify for him. The Prisoner refuses her.

Another creak, another woman. Motherly, knitting, she admits she is the one. What is “honor” to her at her age? Creak. The Scornful One enters and takes the blame. Then The Silly One. The Prisoner reacts with amazement and disbelief at each new woman. And there are six more in the lobby! The Prisoner looks like he wishes he had never been born. He orders them to go away, but oh hell no. They squabble loudly among themselves. The Lawyer orders them to pick one of themselves. A judge will never believe this whole gang spent the night with The Prisoner.

The Scornful One sums it up. A woman’s honor is about one thing, while a man’s honor is about everything but that one thing. Women are smothered under their “honor”.

At this point, The Prisoner looks like he would welcome death.

The talkback puts things in perspective. When this play was written in 1917, women could not vote, could not serve on juries, and had no access to birth control. All they had was their “honor”. A convention invented and enforced by men. And it did not apply to men! Sound familiar?

Another excellent production by METROPOLITAN PLAYHOUSE.


-Karen D’Onofrio-