Two of the eight shows in “She Wrote Plays” were performed for a live audience in April, with the remaining six set to premiere this week on WTJU’s podcast collective, Virginia Audio Collective. You can also stream it on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and YouTube. The plays in the series vary in theme and tone, from dramatic to comedic, but all place women at the forefront. Some even feature exclusively female casts.
“They’re not just about relationships between men and women, but between women and other women,” Grissom said.
Roughly 100 years after they were first published, “They That Sit in Darkness” and the other dramas will reach contemporary audiences in a modern format.
“We’re living in a renaissance of audio,” Moore said. “The podcast medium has made it possible to really reach a wide audience. … Podcasting enables so much creativity.”
Despite the quality of the scripts, many of the plays and their playwrights were forgotten over time, as critics tended to dismiss female writers.
“These playwrights were really part of an era where American theater was kind of growing up,” Grissom said. “Plays were melodramas, or very light entertainment. … For lack of a better word, American theater before these playwrights was very old-fashioned.”
Because of the plays’ range in themes and subjects, Grissom reached out to two students for help adapting two of the plays. One of those is rising fourth-year student Mary Hall. Other students acted in the audio dramas.
Hall, though she majored in drama, had yet to take a class with Grissom. But her script submission to UVA’s New Works Festival caught his attention.