Metropolitan Playhouse to Present Screened Reading of CONSTANCY by Neith Boyce

Obie Award winner Metropolitan Playhouse will present a free "screened" reading of Neith Boyce's groundbreaking drama, CONSTANCY, via live stream video, with talkback to follow, on Saturday, May 30, 2020 at 8 PM, EST.

In CONSTANCY, Neith Boyce lays bear the vanity of a lothario, as he is confronted with mature love. Rex literally knocks at the window of Moira, a lover he jilted months before. Hoping to fan the passionate flames of their affair back to a blaze, he's once again ready for anything--anything but to be seen for what he actually is. Constancy is the story of a woman who has learned bitter lessons from heartbreak, and is ready to give a little instruction of her own to a man who once had her heart, and now has her understanding.

Not only was the play groundbreaking in its wry, witty, and clear-eyed portrayal of a woman rejecting outdated sexual roles, it was also inspired by a real rendez-vous between Mabel Dodge and John Reed. Mabel Dodge was a literary and arts salon leader, the center of the Greenwich Village circle that ultimately gave birth to The Provincetown Players. Reed, of course, was the Communist journalist and activist who provided early documentation of the Russian Revolution in his Ten Days That Shook the World. The play also clearly articulates tensions known to exist within its author's own marriage, which was acknowledged to be "open," but found both partners playing the same gendered roles--he engaging in affairs; she caring for the children--that their Bohemian circle claimed to wish to flout.

The reading will be directed by Laura Livingston. The cast includes Elisabeth Ahrens and Paul Bomba.

Running Time: 30 minutes
Talkback to follow, including audience questions

Available via Zoom and YouTube:
www.metropolitanplayhouse.org/virtualplayhouse

The program will also be simultaneously broadcast on WBAI Radio 99.5 FM and wbai.org

NEITH BOYCE (1872-1951) was a novelist and journalist, as well as a playwright, and she was among the founding members of The Provincetown Players. Though she was born in Indiana, her father moved the family to Los Angeles, where he co-founded the Los Angeles Times, and she began works as a journalist in her teens. After the family moved to New York, she wrote for Vogue and The Commercial Advertiser, and it was there she met her future husband, novelist and journalist Hutchins Hapgood. By the 1890's, she was a part of a Greenwich Village literary and cultural scene, and with Hapgood supported the work of Mabel Dodge, Djuna Barnes, Alfred Stieglitz, Georgia O'Keeffe, and Gertrude Stein. Her own writing included seven novels, as well as four plays, all of which received first productions at Provincetown: Constancy (19114), Enemies (written with Hapgood, 1916), Two Sons (1916), and Winter's Night (1928).

ARTISTS' RELIEF
Metropolitan presents these readings as a way of keeping the theater's pilot lit.
They also serve to help us compensate performing artists, so particularly affected, during this long "pause."
Information about the theater's ARTISTS RELIEF FUND may be found at
www.metropolitanplayhouse.org/covidaid

The VIRTUAL PLAYHOUSE began on March 28, 2020, with Alice Gerstenberg's "He Said and She Said," and continued the following week with Eugene O'Neill's "The Rope," with five times the attendance. Beginning with Gerstenberg's "Hearts," the program is simultaneously broadcast on New York's Pacifica Radio Station WBAI, 99.5 FM. For this period of social distancing, with Metropolitan Playhouse's facility closed, actors read parts to the camera from their homes, using the Zoom platform, which enables all characters in a scene to be onscreen simultaneously. Weekly readings are in progress, with mid-week programing in develpment, all drawn from the rich trove of lost American theater. The playhouse is honored and fortunate to be able to continue its mission of exploring America's diverse theatrical history during these trying times. The presentation of the forgotten one-act plays is an ideal way to pursue the theater's mission and extend its current season, devoted to plays and themes of DISSENT.

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