Play about Frankenstein

 

The setting of the next production by senior acting students is Geneva, in 1816, and the premise is well known: Percy Shelley, George Byron, Claire Clairmont and Mary Godwin have challenged each other to write a Gothic tale.

Only Mary succeeds. Her Frankenstein and his monster become one of the recurring images of the modern world. Her life and that of the other young people echo her tale.

Mary Godwin Shelley, author of Frankenstein, had a hard life. She was the daughter of feminist Mary Wollstonecraft and radical William Godwin, and married the Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley.

This play traces her struggle between being a good wife or a good writer, between motherhood and work, between her parents and husband’s vision of a brave new world and her own dark inner reality, the creature within.

The play is Liz Lochead’s Blood and Ice, directed by Lib Spry. It will be presented by the Theatre Department in the Cazalet Studio of the F.S. Smith Auditorium (Loyola) from Feb. 10 to 19. For details, see the
The Backpage.