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Shame the Devil!  An Audience with Fanny Kemble

Shame the Devil! An Audience with Fanny Kemble

By Anne Ludlum.

Product Code: SC5000

Full-length Play

Drama

Cast size: 1w.


Livestream and Record & Stream Rights Available


Rights and availability

This title can be licensed and sold throughout the World.

* Please note the royalty rate listed is the minimum royalty rate per performance. The actual royalty rate will be determined upon completion of a royalty application.

Available Formats
$9.95
In Stock
$9.95
(Unprintable)

Min. Royalty Rate: $85.00/perf

Synopsis

Late on an October evening in 1850, Fanny Kemble bursts into her Manhattan parlor—terrified and angry. Her former husband has published a scurrilous attack on her character and she fears this will not only damage her personal reputation, but ruin her chances for a new career—she just that night debuted as a solo reader of plays. To defend herself, Fanny proceeds to tell her story, utilizing material from her constant intellectual companion, William Shakespeare. She takes us through her dazzling youthful career as a member of the great Kemble-Siddons theatrical family, her marriage to a prominent Philadelphia lawyer, the birth of her children, and the appalling discovery that her husband is a slave owner. Fanny recreates for us her life on her husband's Sea Island plantation. She visits the rice fields, calls at slave cabins, inspects the infirmary—and she is galvanized into action. She agitated for fair work rules, distributes forbidden goods, nurses the sick and injured. She even teaches a slave to read—a serious crime. In a climactic revelation, she realizes that "the misery of the slave has a counterpart the moral wretchedness of the master." Then she faces the consequences of making public her confirmed opposition to slavery: divorce, the loss of her children, and the need to earn her own living as a middle-aged, single woman. This play is based on writings of Fanny Kemble, especially her Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation 1838-1839, possibly the best eyewitness plantation account.

Notes

Livestream and Record & Stream Rights Available

Details

  • Status In stock
  • Type of Show Full-length Play
  • Product Code SC5000
  • Minimum Cast Size 1
  • Pages of Dialogue 58
  • Min. Royalty Rate $85.00/perf
  • Approx. Run Time 90 min
  • Staging Unit set.

Categories

  • Target Audience High School | College and Adult
  • Performing Group College Theatre | Community Theatre | Professional Theatre | Touring Group
  • Genre Drama
  • ISBN(13) 9780871298522

* Please note the royalty rate listed is the minimum royalty rate per performance. The actual royalty rate will be determined upon completion of a royalty application.

Customer Reviews

A powerful vehicle for an exceptional actress. Takes us into its world and teaches us about ours.

Amie Brockway, The Open Eye Theater, Margaretville, NY