Lady Charlotte Elizabeth Guest (1812-1895) was an English aristocrat and a leading figure in the study of literature and the wider Welsh Renaissance of the 19th century -- much to her husband’s chagrin. He’d rather she dedicate her full attention to her housewife duties and the raising of their seven children.
Lady Guest’s story is told in “Unbecoming,” a new play by Princeton theater alumna Emma Watkins, Class of 2018, which will be presented by the university’s Lewis Center for Theater and Arts Program in Theater in four online streamings from Friday, Jan. 15, to Sunday, Jan. 17.
The fully staged production, which was filmed outdoors by a quarantined cast of six, is the senior thesis for Paige Allen, who is the production’s dramaturg and portrays Lady Charlotte, and Eliana Cohen-Orth, who directed the production and fills the roles of Wife of England/Gwydion.
“Unbecoming” originally was proposed as a live theater production but had to be rethought with the suspension of on-campus gatherings as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. Allen and Cohen-Orth introduced the play to the four other Princeton students they were planning to live with in a house off-campus for the fall semester, and the six of them decided to perform the show as a quarantine pod.
Over the course of nine weeks, the team explored the script, workshopped revisions and rehearsed the play in the house’s backyard before filming the production. The team both performed and served in a number of production roles with equipment, costumes, and props shipped or delivered via contactless drop-off outside the house by the Lewis Center’s production staff.
The rest of the cast includes sophomore Eliyana Abraham; senior Nora Aguiar, who also served as stage manager; senior Naomi Park, who also served as lighting designer; and senior Hannah Wang.
Watkins wrote “Unbecoming” as her dissertation at Cardiff University in Wales, where she was a Fulbright Scholar and studied performance adaptations of Welsh myths and folklore. The drama is inspired by the story of the real-life Lady Charlotte, a Victorian housewife and mother whose mission to translate the “Mabinogion,” a collection of ancient Welsh stories, are met by her husband with dismay.
Rooted in ancient Welsh traditions of oral storytelling, the tales of the “Mabinogion” intertwine myth, tradition and history to produce some of Wales’ earliest prose literature. While translating the works into English, Charlotte encounters one of the collection’s mythic characters, Blodeuwedd — a woman conjured from flowers as a wife for her creator and punished for her infidelity — and struggles to reconcile her creative ambitions with 19th-century expectations of marriage and motherhood.
Allen first encountered “Unbecoming” as a participant in a short development workshop hosted by Princeton in January 2020 and shared the script with Cohen-Orth. In addition to the prospect of collaborating with Watkins, Allen and Cohen-Orth were attracted to the piece’s directorial design challenges, emphasis on women’s voices, engagement with history and potential for ensemble storytelling, so they proposed the project to the Program in Theater as their senior theses.
Allen, who is from Mountain Top, Pennsylvania, is pursuing a degree in English with certificates in creative writing, humanistic studies, theater, and music theater. Cohen-Orth, a resident of New York City, is pursuing a degree in English and a certificate in theater.
The film was edited by Adam Olkin, who also served as technical director. Olkin is a junior at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts where he is majoring in film and television.Other Princeton University students working remotely or socially distanced in production roles include junior Isabella Hilditch as set designer, first-year student Casey Beidel as assistant stage manager, senior Minjae Kim as sound designer, junior Ruth Schultz as an acrobatics and movement coach, junior Delaney McMahon as composer and sophomore Halle Mitchell as music director.
The filmed play will be streamed for free on the Lewis Center’s video performance page 7 p.m. Friday, Jan. 15; 2 p.m. Saturday, Jan. 16, and Sunday, Jan. 17; and 8 p.m. Saturday, Jan. 16. Live talkback sessions will take place after the Saturday late screening and Sunday’s afternoon show. The film will be closed captioned and the conversations will be live captioned. Go online for more information or to register for access to the Zoom talkbacks.
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