Cygnet Salon to Host Reading of MOTHER OF THE MAID in September

Cygnet Salon's September staged reading will be Mother of the Maid by Jane Anderson (Emmy winner for Olive Kitteridge, et alia) Monday September 16, at 7 pm at 21ten Theatre.

Intimate, messy, and modern, Mother of the Maid takes on the Joan of Arc story from a riveting new perspective – through the eyes of her mother, swept up in the baffling journey of her odd and extraordinary girl.

Mother of the Maid

By Jane Anderson; a Staged Reading produced by Cygnet Salon

Monday, September 16, 7 pm

At 21ten Theatre  |   2110 SE 10th Ave, Portland, OR 97214

Tickets $15

Mother of the Maid speaks to the burden and disposability of celebrity, and the hard road of common people confronting a titanic political agenda. But most importantly, it asks: how can we possibly release our different, “other” children to make their own fate in a brutal, beautiful world?

The play plunges us into to a medieval, modern, and feminist France. We see Joan (saint, warrior, icon, feminist, and superstar) confounding her mother (gritty, with visceral strength, as frightened as she is fierce), her brother (following her into battle to ride the gravy train of fame), and her father (unlettered, strap-wielding, whose suspicions of his daughter's voices are never entirely quelled).

Six actors play ten roles in this game of wills and strategies. Its people are connected to the land and know that life can be brutal and short. Anderson's women fight to be believed as they cross swords and words with men determined to win regardless of moral cost.

The cast:  Jerilyn Armstrong, Grant Byington, Michael Fisher-Welsh, Akitora Ishii, Ariel Puls, and Marilyn Stacey, with music by Elleon Dobias.

Marin Theater in Mill Valley, California, presented the show's West Coast premiere on November 14, 2019. Marilyn Stacey traveled to that opening to meet Ms. Anderson. The playwright looked Marilyn over, said “I can see that,” and graciously granted her the performance rights. Marilyn currently holds the performance rights through Concord Theatricals.

Art: A 1903 engraving of Joan of Arc by Albert Lynch, featured in the Figaro Illustre magazine.

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