I was doing research for a review of a play at the Stratford Festival this season when I stumbled upon this volume. My youngest two children and I have been attending plays in Stratford for the last several years. And Jessica has been one of our favourite actors in almost everything she has been in. Prior to reading this I had been on Shakespearian inspired fiction kick. Including Ted Neill’s Post Apocalyptic Space Shakespeare Series and the Shakespearean Shorts from Pettyfeather Publishing and the Shakespeare Murders Series by Guy Hale. It seems to be a spring and summer of not only Shakespeare plays (The Tempest, A Midsummer Night's Dream, and Othello) but also Shakespeare inspired fiction. And to be honest I could easily see Hill playing the main human-like construct is named J-9, though she prefers to be called Janine from Neill’s series. But back to the volume at hand.
The description on the back of this volume states:
“In The Dark Lady, William Shakespeare and Emilia Bassano wrestle with artistic collaboration, ambition, deep love, and legacy— an entanglement that will profoundly shape both their lives and their work.
In Pandora, the title character has been carrying the burden of all human suffering since the beginning of time and is now pondering the why of it all. Her curiosity starts connecting the dots between myth, modern science, and the meaning of theatre itself as she quests for answers to life’s unpredictability.”
About the author we are informed:
“Jessica is a bilingual actor, playwright and teacher originally from Montreal. Pandora and The Dark Lady marked her playwriting debut in 2023 with both having their world premiere productions within months of each other in Winnipeg and Saskatoon. Calgary welcomed a subsequent production of The Dark Lady within the same year.
Jessica has spent eight seasons acting at the Stratford Festival, starring as Viola in Twelfth Night, Helena in All's Well that Ends Well and Lady Anne in Richard III. She has performed in both English and French on stage, on screen, in voicework and in games.
A graduate of Stratford Festival’s Birmingham Conservatory, McGill University and Dawson College, she is also a visiting instructor at the National Theatre School of Canada, teaching Chekhov and Shakespeare.”
I typically do not highlight part of a play, but do in the notes and forwards and such. This time I highlighted a few passages in each play as well. My highlights my first time through this volume are:
Playwright's Notes:
“We all want to leave our mark. We are all trying to understand and make meaning of our place in the world. What of us lives on, whose story gets told, what kind of love or art can never be destroyed? What is the legacy we are leaving? I think both plays address this in different ways.”
“The Dark Lady allowed me to explore these questions from a marginalized perspective.”
“The play may be fiction, but Emilia Bassano-Lanier’s life truly does seem to encompass the breadth of Shakespeare’s work. The compounding historical coincidences in timelines, verse lines, friends in common, are astonishing...and delicious. It felt like uncovering a 400-year-old mystery. As if Time were untangling a secret knot. As if I was stumbling on ancient etchings waiting to be discovered, that simply said “I was here.””
“Pandora fed a fascination I’ve always had about the similarities between art and science. They both help us make sense of the world and give us drastically different yet complementary lenses on what we call reality. An act of theatre needs an audience to exist, and it’s different every time you see it. Until then, it’s just the possibility of a performance in an empty space. Funnily, that statement can also apply to quantum mechanics, a field of science so strange it skirts with philosophy.”
Forward:
“She became a playwright-actress, and I was lucky enough to be the friend, dramaturge and director that she shared her thoughts, desires and new plays with. Within the last three years of the plague, Jessica has written three plays and has so far scheduled four professional productions of her works (two of them are now published, and you hold them in your hands); with shows in Alberta, Ontario, Saskatchewan and Winnipeg all taking place between 2022 and 2023. And there are more readings, productions and playwrighting commissions scheduled for 2024. My friend is unstoppable. We are so lucky to be alive now in the Age of Jess!”
“In early 2023, before we finally collaborated on the full production of The Dark Lady in the spring, we delivered the world-premiere of Pandora in a very dark and cold Winnipeg winter. A solo piece about Greek mythology, quantum mechanics, the plague, and molecular and metaphysical interconnectedness somehow became a beacon of hope and joy during a very sombre season. Winnipeg audiences fell in love with Jessica then.”
The Dark Lady:
“Oh, you should know this about me:
I love old books, the bigger, the older, the
better.
They've endured...you know?
They’re real. Lasting. Tactile.
And... they smell amazing!
They smell like what I imagine knowledge
should smell like.”
““Sufferance is the badge of all our tribe.””
“Where do the notes go after we can’t hear
them?
They seem to reverberate in the air fainter
and fainter until they disappear...
But what if they don’t? What if instead,
they float up, up, beyond the clouds and
then hang there like stars, suspended in the
firmament. “
“Hamnet and Odyllia. You wrote them a play.
What you wrote...
I have no words for what you wrote.
Is this.... is this what genius is? Why does it
hurt?
...words
don’t taste the same.
What was I fighting so hard for?
What do I...?
Where do I belong?”
“I’m reinterpreting the Bible from the women’s perspective.
Starting with Eve, then working my way up to the Virgin Mary.
Most of the women in there don’t even have names.
I’m going to give each one of those women a voice.”
Pandora:
Designer's Note:
“The script is all the things I love: mythology, history, quantum physics, real nerd shit. It is such a wonderful text that there was no shortage of inspiration and no hesitation to say yes to the opportunity. It wasn’t my first production design, but it would certainly be my most ambitious. Lighting, video, sound and set, all conceived to work together to support this epic script.”
“My favourite element of the show was our use of shadows. Live and projected shadows would give Jessica a scene partner, or shadow duet featured a prerecorded three. A choreographed they danced Pandora’s movement, and together mirroring the past in sync with present and across the quantum field; the one another.”
Pandora The Play:
“From stubbed toes to sinkholes... If something unpredictable happens that messes up your plans, it’s all my fault.”
“I call them... weasels.
The unexpected wrenches in the machine.
They le in wait...ready to pop and remind you what little control you actually have over your life.”
“They’ve kept me around all these years, so I
could witness the damage I’ve done.
That’s my punishment.
“The first of our kind...Cursed to witness all
the days of our kind.””
“We have two valid theories to explain how
the world works.
But hey are completely incompatible descriptions of Reality.
Wo which one is is Real?
Is everything deterministic, linear and logical?
Or probabilistic, chaotic and unpredictable?
Or have we been looking at it all wrong?
Is there a way to connect the two?
Inevitable unpredictability. Deterministic chaos.”
“What if that feeling is the cost of meaning?
Because it could have gone differently.
Because it can still go differently.
What if being curious.... is enough?”
Both plays are masterfully written. And I can easily create the picture of the staging in my mind’s eye. Both touch on some serious issues, And yet they also are encouraging and inspiring.
I enjoyed this so much I ordered a copy for my 15 year old knowing she will love it as well. These are two very moving and powerful plays. I could easily see both expanded into novels that would be popular, or even graphic novels. But they are well enough written and so good, I put the volume back on my ‘to be read’ pile to circle back to again! One of the notes mentions that Jessica has written 3 plays, I would to see the other one in print, to read or on stages based on how good these two are, and would pick up any others she published to read as well. An excellent volume with two amazing plays! Well worth the read, and attending if you ever get the chance.
Other Posts Related to Shakespeare:
Reviews of Stratford Shakespeare Productions:
The Tempest - Stratford Festival 2019
Richard III – 2022
Hamlet – 2022
King Lear – 2023
Goblin MacBeth - 2023
Romeo & Juliette – 2024
Cymbeline – 2024
Twelfth Night – 2024
As You Like It - 2025
The Winter's Tale - 2025
...
Reviews of Other Stratford Productions:
The Miser – 2022
Frankenstein Revived – 2023
Grand Magic – 2023
A Wrinkle in Time – 2023
Annie - 2025
Anne of Green Gables - 2025
Goblin Oedipus - 2025
Saturday, Sunday, Monday - 2026
…
Reviews of Shakespeare Movies:
Cymbeline – 2014
Books by Ted Neill:
Post Apocalyptic Space Shakespeare Series:
Twelfth Night
As You Like It
A Mid Summers’s Night Dream
Much Ado About Nothing
…
Shakespearean Shorts from Pettyfeather Publishing:
Guy Hale's Shakespeare Murders Series:
2. All Our Yesterdays
3. Put Out the Light
4. Sleep No More
…
