RIVETED: A STAGED READING

Written by Deborah Silverstein

Directed by Erin McCarson

Musical Direction by Steve Sensenig

Dramaturgy by Katie Jones

CAST

Rosie: Sara Yakira

Betty: Brandi Andrade

Emma: Chelsey Gaddy

Young Rosie: Katie Langwell

Frank: Tom Bastek

Will / Bill: Dillon Giles

Bea: TJ Mool

June/Woman/Stage Directions: Denise Lockett

Martha / Young Betty: Rachel Fralick

Elliott: Adam Olson

Guitar: Robert Sine

Violin: Tierra Raiti

Piano: Steve Sensenig

Playwright’s Note

We all come into this world with tears and wings. Our tears wash our hearts and souls. Our wings give them flight. Then begins the training. Little boys are taught to forget their tears. Little girls learn to forget their wings. Wings are so wild and bold and strong, designed to catch the wind and soar the heights of possibility.

In my mother's time, the training was quite severe. Her wings were pruned, pared down to the quick, which her own loving mother then pinned carefully to her side, just as had been done to her, and her mother before her. When the Second World War came along, they unpinned my mother's wing stubs, briefly, for the sake of the country, and the war machine, while the boys were all occupied flying into righteous battle across the Atlantic. When that war ended, and the men who'd survived came home, every magazine carried explicit instructions for the repinning of women's wings. Men found them ugly, threatening, unfeminine. The economy found them unnecessary. Mothers, once again, dedicated themselves to the problem of the wings of their own, beloved daughters.

My own mother dutifully pruned my sprouting wings, trimming them down, thinning their loft, shortening their span. Then came my generation's wars, entirely different affairs. We discovered the enemies within: imperialism, racism, sexism, homophobia. Young women found themselves in a circle with their sisters. We washed each other's hearts and souls with our tears of awakening, and learned to see our battered wings as things of beauty and awesome power.

When my own daughters entered the world, I celebrated their budding wings. I guarded them like a mother hawk, grooming every filament, every fiber, every precious feather. With their wings outstretched, wide and wondrous, my daughters would be free to soar.