October 29, 2025 • 44 mins
Playwright Laurie Flanigan-Hegge, two directors, and a puppet artist discuss staging "Prick," a play about Scottish witch trials, now opening in Chicago November 6-16.
In August 2023, we spoke with playwright Laurie Flanigan-Hegge about Prick, her play about the Scottish witch trials. It had just premiered at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.
Two years later, the play has traveled to New Orleans, Wellington (New Zealand), and opens November 6-16, 2025 at the Den Theater in Chicago.
We reunite with Laurie and puppet artist Madeline Helling, and meet two directors: Jeff Mills of Chicago's Proboscis Theater Company and Amy Chaffee from Tulane University.
The conversation covers what it's like staging historical violence, why the single puppet design works so powerfully, and how a play about 17th-century Scotland keeps finding new relevance.
About the PlayPrick examines the Scottish witch trials through three women: an Unknown Woman lost to history, Marioun Twedy of Peebles, and Isobel Gowdie. The title refers to "pricking"—searching accused women's bodies for the "devil's mark" with sharp instruments.
The play moves between past and present, uses dark humor and Scottish folk music, and centers on a single haunting puppet created by Madeline Helling.
What They DiscussThe rehearsal process: Both directors talk about the challenge of staging the pricking scenes, even with a puppet. Jeff's Chicago cast continues working through how to show violence respectfully. Amy's New Orleans students couldn't bring the instrument near the puppet—they performed the gesture from twelve feet away.
The puppet's power: Madeline designed one puppet to represent all the accused women. It's specific enough to feel real, neutral enough that audiences project onto it. The puppet travels between productions and comes back to her for repairs.
Contemporary connections: The play addresses ongoing witch hunts in countries where witchcraft remains a state crime. Amy teaches in Louisiana and discusses working in a politically charged environment. Jeff talks about theater as "rehumanization" in response to current dehumanization.
The music: Both productions use songs by Heal and Harrow, a folk duo who created an album for the Witches of Scotland Campaign. Jeff adds Scottish guitar with electronics. Amy's students performed acapella arrangements.
Cultural complications: Amy reflects on taking the play to Wellington, New Zealand—a colonial capital—at a conference focused on integrating Māori culture with acting and voice techniques. The play deals with Scotland as both colonized and colonizer, which created complex responses from audiences of different backgrounds.
"Remembrance Is Resistance"This Witches of Scotland Campaign motto runs through the conversation. The campaign seeks pardons and memorials for nearly 5,000 documented accused. They created a tartan anyone can wear to show support.
At Tulane, one student built a monument inscribed with every name from the database and installed it in the lobby.
Chicago ProductionNovember 6-16, 2025 The Den Theater, Milwaukee Avenue Tickets: thedentheatre.com (search "Prick")
Two weekends only. Proboscis Theater Company's production features new jackdaw puppets and is reaching out to both theater audiences and Chicago's pagan communities.
Links
Get Tickets to the Chicago Production at the Den Theatre
National Archives, Scotland, Early Modern Witch Trials
Prick: A Play of the Scottish Witch Trials Podcast Episode
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Welcome back to The Thing about Witch Hunts.
I'm Josh Hutchinson, and today we're returning to a story we
first shared back in Episode 47 in August 2023.
We're talking about the play Prick again, and here we're now
in Episode 166. And I'm Sarah Jack Prick is a
(00:22):
powerful theatrical production about the Scottish witch trials,
written by playwright Lori Flanagan Heggie and originally
directed by Maggie Griebel. The play tells the stories of
women from the Scottish witch trials, including an unknown
woman whose name has been lost to history, Marian Tweedy, who
was pricked but never confessed,and the infamous Isabel Gowdy.
(00:47):
Using haunting puppetry by artist Madeleine Helling, dark
comedy and contemporary relevance, Prick draws a
powerful line from the pricking and quarrelsome dames of the
past to modern misogyny. Since its premiere at the 2023
Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Prickhas travelled to London, New
Orleans, New Zealand and is now heading to Chicago for two
(01:12):
weekends, November 6th through 16th at the Den Theatre.
Today we're joined by returning Minnesota guest playwright Lori
Flanagan Heggie and puppet artist Madeline Healey.
Lori is wearing the Witches of Scotland memorial tartan like
these. We also have director Jeff Mills
(01:33):
from Chicago's Proboscis TheatreCompany and director Amy Chafee,
who's an associate professor at Tulane University in New
Orleans, LA, who directed the play there in New Orleans and
also in New Zealand. So let's find out what's
happened with Prick since we last spoke.
Welcome to The Thing About WitchHunts podcast.
(01:55):
Returning guests Lori Flanagan, Hegy and Madeline Helling.
And welcome to our new guests, Amy Chaffee and Jeff Mills.
Please let us know. Who you are?
And what we need to know about you.
I'll start. My name is Lori Flanagan Hegy,
and I'm the playwright of Prick,which was inspired by the
(02:15):
Witches of Scotland campaign forjustice against the accused
witches in the early modern period.
And it premiered at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in
2023. When you so kindly had us on the
first time we talked about this play.
And since then, it has been in the US and it's in rehearsal
right now with my colleague and friend Jeff Mills, who is
(02:37):
directing it in Chicago. I'll take that.
I am Jeff Mills Co, artistic director of Proboscis Theatre
Company in Chicago. We are a rough and tumble,
scrappy Little Theatre company ensemble.
And Lori and I and Amy, we've all been friends for a very long
(03:00):
time, 35 years, something like that.
And it's just when I heard that when Lori had written this play
about the witch trials in Scotland, it is historical
territory that our company is sort of has covered.
And to approach that from a slightly different perspective
was very exciting. Fact that it was Lori was very
(03:22):
exciting. And the fact that we have an
opportunity to set the record straight a little bit to a small
number of folks is also very excited.
Since I got thrown a little energy there, I'll step in.
I'm Amy Chafee. I'm a professor at Tulane
University in voice and acting, and while I predominantly coach
(03:44):
voice and do accents and dialects and film and
television, Lori sent me this script saying, hey, if you know
anybody. And then this opportunity opened
up where I could direct a project for the first time in
almost nine years at this university.
I got a slot at directing, whichis actually originally how Jeff
(04:04):
and Lori and I met was I was directing way back when, but the
play suited everything that I needed.
And then I found out Jeff was already doing it.
And I was like, oh, but then because I'm at a university and
I had funding and everything kind of built in, I slid in and
I got to do the North American premiere, which was at a
(04:25):
university. Jeff is going to do the
professional premiere. And then I was able to take the
show with the entire student cast, 9 undergraduates, to a
theatre festival in New Zealand.So we also got to do the Oceania
premiere. And we all used Madeline's
puppet. I'm Madeline Helly and I'm a
puppet. Artist in Minneapolis, and I'm a
(04:46):
friend and neighbor of Laurie. She approached me to work on
this piece that she was writing,and it was very easy to say.
It was very inspiring to tell a truthful story that's been
suppressed. Thank you everyone for those
introductions. It's very nice to see you again
(05:07):
or to meet you for the first time.
So thank you all for bringing your amazing talent and
experience to the show. Lori, it's been 2 years since we
spoke about PRICK. Can you refresh our memories of
what is PRICK? Yes, So Prick is a very
(05:27):
anachronistic play about the Scottish witch trials.
And by necronistic I mean that it's set in the then and the now
and everywhere in between. And that's been one of the fun
things about working, continuingto work on it as I've continued
to press more into that aspect of this piece as I've been
continuing to develop it. It was originally produced at
(05:49):
the Edinburgh Fringe Festival with director Maggie Gravel, who
actually instigated the project for her master's thesis.
And we had the luxury of performing it in Edmiro for a
lot of the people that I was using as research for this
piece. So we actually met Claire
(06:09):
Mitchell and Zoeven Zitatsi. They were at the first
performance. Judith Langland Scott came to
see it and talked to us afterwards about what we got
right and the one thing that shewanted changed, which was a
pretty small thing, which was great, it had to do with the
fairies being called fairies. She said no, they would only
call them the good people, so the good neighbors.
So it's not a substantive issue with the history of the play.
(06:32):
But since that time, I feel likeI have had the opportunity to
really continue to deepen my understanding of this subject
and the impact that it's having in our current world.
I've never had a play that people have been more interested
in than this piece. Everywhere I go, people want to
(06:53):
talk to me about it. They want to know if I know what
the word means. Prick.
That's a people have a response to that title and they want to
know why I named it. It's.
Dirty. They want to know why I used
that word. And so it kind of leads to this
open conversation. No matter who I'm in
relationship with and discussionabout the play, whether it's a
theater person or a friend from my childhood or somebody that I
(07:17):
know online, everybody wants to know more about the subject.
And much like the Witches of Scotland campaign and the tartan
that they came out with, every time I have a conversation with
somebody, it's an opportunity totalk about things that are
happening in our world today, misogyny today, the way that
women are being diminished exponentially by the minute in
(07:39):
our country, and also about what's happening around the
world in present time around this subject.
So for me, it's been, yes, it had a a wonderful production in
Enboro, but it just keeps expanding and that my brain
keeps expanding around the project.
And I think the the world of this play keeps expanding.
So it's been fascinating to me to have American students and
(08:02):
American artists working on the piece because that was what my
first curiosity was as an American playwright.
First of all, I wondered, do I have the right to write this
piece? And I feel like I've been
endowed with that and have been in relationship with Scottish
people who are encouraging the project, encouraging it to go
forward. And I really am just tickled
(08:23):
every single time there's a new learning or a new kind of
sharing about the subject or discovery that happens with
American artists. The very interesting question
you bring up Lori, about do I have the right to write about
this? One of the reasons why I picked
it for my directing slot is, youknow, representation and giving
(08:45):
voice to a community is a very contentious thing anymore.
And my mom's from Scotland. I have three of my 4
grandparents were born there by process of elimination.
I too. I'm also like a descendant of
people who endured the witch trials.
I don't have. We don't have enough records
(09:07):
from the poor villages that my family are from to trace back
anything really. But considering the numbers,
like there was only 1/4 of a million people live during the
witch trials of Scotland, and during that 150 years, like one
in 15 were involved, like it's very, very likely that at least
(09:30):
my ancestors attended new people.
Yeah, etcetera. So I thought, I have a right to
direct this play. No one can say, woo, you
shouldn't be doing that play because I've had colleagues who
were called out for directing plays that were not about their
culture. And I was like, I got this,
which actually matters where I work, and New Orleans, which is
(09:52):
Black dominant community, you have a lot of people whose
voices have been misrepresented and appropriated, and a lot of
sort of cultural violence has accumulated in the community
here. So I was sort of relieved and
proud to bring the story here. Yet it was something that was
very relatable. It's a deeply spiritual
community here on the witchy level, Like it's part of our
(10:16):
cultural exports, if you will, in New Orleans.
A lot of people come here for the voodoo stay, for the
alcoholism. I know, I'm just kidding.
But so there was interest in it on that level.
Like people who were apothecary owners showed up to see the
show, people who are practicing who we were speaking before the
(10:36):
show started about official and unofficial tours.
I mean, there are actual witch tours in town and there are
rites and rituals that happen all the time very bluntly.
And that was interesting that myshow was interesting to them.
I had a student, I also want to say I had a student who was my
(10:57):
dramaturg and she was also an architecture student.
She took it upon herself to create an actual physical
monument to the current number of names on the witches of
Scotland. Yeah, pulled out every single
name, which is nearly 5000 and created a monument and put it in
(11:20):
our lobby. Yeah, that was pretty profound.
You know, it's interesting, Amy,because I've really tuned into
the Witches of Scotland campaigners, Zoe and Claire
talking about this very fact because a lot of people win this
tart and came out and I'm obsessed about it because I just
put it on for the first time today.
But people had questions about whether they had the right to
wear it. And they have talked, spoken on
their podcast about how if you have an interest in righting the
(11:44):
wrong, that that makes you part of the clan.
And I take that to heart. And also as somebody who is a
writer, I have always worked from a place, well, not always,
but I've I began, I became a writer with an interest in
historical events and using thatas a springboard towards my
(12:05):
work. And this, this mantra that
they're, they've been saying lately, Zoe and Claire have been
saying remembrance is resistanceto me, that remembrance has
resistance motto applies to our present moment in our present
country. So to me, to be working with
this material in a country that I do not have ancestral ties to,
(12:27):
to my knowledge, I have big tiesto what's going on here.
And to me, the idea of a prickerwith the title prick comes from
both the object, a pricking instrument, and the person who
did the actual pricking of a woman looking for a double S
mark on her body. The idea of that pricking to me
is a very contemporary thing. Like we are being pricked all
(12:48):
the time. The East wing of the White House
got torn down. That's where the women worked.
That's where the first ladies were.
That, like, erasure of their existence from the White House
grounds, it feels like an act ofviolence.
And to me, that's like the pricking that happened yesterday
or the day before. Our whole culture's
consciousness, Every woman in America got pricked.
(13:11):
Can I also add to that, it's really interesting the cultural
clash that I had when I took theshow to another colonized place,
because within the show you dealwith the fact that England is
colonizing Scotland and Scotlandis a colonized land.
And then they took the warrior men of Scotland and sent them
(13:33):
abroad to colonize every other place.
And when we went to New Zealand,the site of the most horrific
colonization, the site of some of the worst depredations
against the indigenous culture, were in Dunedin, which is the
Gaelic or the Gaelic word for Edinburgh, and that's in South
(13:53):
Island. We performed it in Wellington,
in the colonial capital of the country, and we did it at a
conference that was very focusedon this melding of Maudie
culture with the acting and voice techniques that we were
doing. And then I brought in this play
about the depredation and silencing of voices due to
(14:18):
colonialism, but the white people there were the colonizers
instead of the. But it was this crazy layering.
And I got some very interesting feedback on that from people of
different racist cultures, nationalities, identities and
generations in New Zealand. So it was this appropriation
(14:40):
combination. Very curious.
Jeff, are you buckled in and ready for your ride on this
'cause you can hear like how impactful it is and you've been
working with it. So chime in and tell us what
what this has been like for you.Yeah, I, I mean, the, we're in
(15:03):
the middle of rehearsals now, sowe're deep into staging the
amazing puppets and grappling every single rehearsal with some
very challenging and difficult material.
It is really interesting becauseLori felt like there needed to
be a puppet who bore the brunt of the pricking of the actual
(15:29):
pricking, the violent action of the play so that we wouldn't
have to put an actor in that position and to sort of
experience that trauma. And we, we were just working the
scene last night and it was quite disturbing how upset
people got from watching the puppet being, and we were there
(15:53):
like experimenting and very, andthat's such a hard place to
rehearse in because everybody's stimulated by, by the things
that we are have to do with the puppet.
And in order to get to the rightchoice, we have to experiment
with a whole range of choices interms of visually, how does it
(16:15):
work? How can we tell this visual
story of this puppet being abused or of a puppet
representing a woman being abused in this way?
And it's very upsetting. We have to continually kind of
take breaks and check in becausethe cast is mostly women and
female representing folks. The play is very fun for the
(16:36):
most part because it has a satirical layer to it.
And the and the puppets reveal this sort of worlds of kind of
joy and playfulness. And then we get to the big punch
in the stomach sections where weactually have this man who is
got this instrument, a kind of agiant pricker that's made-up of
(16:57):
the same material as the puppet itself.
And we've got several of them. One is smaller, one is medium,
and one is 1 is very big, which brings it into this very absurd
world in the act of trying to get it right.
And we want to be as respectful as we can to the women in the
room, to all of us in the room, to the people who've been
(17:19):
accused, and to Laurie and her words and to the puppet.
Because the puppet has life. The puppet is all of these
journeys and all the people thathave in this sympathetic way,
right, that have used and works and made that puppet come to
life. All of their energy is inside
that puppet. And so there is a respect for
(17:43):
wanting to treat the puppet well, but knowing that the
puppet has to sacrifice a littlebit of that well-being to tell
the story, which is, you know, Imean, that's what we do as
actors all the time when it's a hard story to tell and we put
ourselves in those position. But there's something that's
even that when you see it being done to a puppet that uncanny
(18:07):
valley way, it's kind of extra disturbing.
So it a lot of stuff. My cast didn't want the anywhere
near her. We ended up doing the gesture at
a 12 foot remove and that made my a DS.
Still need to leave the room every time because the power of
(18:28):
imagination and the power of Madeline's creation is so
profound. She's, she's haunting.
I had some designers that I needed to work with at my
university and in the community.There were a lot of puppet
people here in New Orleans and they came to see it.
And as soon as they were ready, their knives were out.
(18:49):
They were like, we'll see. And as soon as they saw your
creation, Madeline, they were all no.
It's really fun to hear you guystalking about the experience
with the puppet because we just had this week in Edinburgh,
which honestly, the puppet was still being built at that point
where we had physically had our hands on it.
And then she's come back to me for repairs and it's like, oh,
(19:10):
hey, little traveler. And then I get to, you know,
just like touch her up. But there hasn't been much to
do. I mean, she's been well cared
for. I'm probably the hardest on her
I guess. But it is.
I think that when just to like speak to the articulation that
happens when you're puppeting islike even that effort, like
(19:31):
breath is an effort. So you have to give it lice.
And in doing that, there's like something I love about puppets
is their ability to draw attention to something really
simple, like how much that effort takes because you have to
make it an animation to give it lice.
And then you are suspending belief for the audience in those
(19:55):
moments. Well, and we very specifically
when we first were talking aboutthis puppet, Madeleine
considered building 3 different puppets for each of the three
main women who are represented in the show.
So the three main characters whohave what Amy titled Arias,
which I love that Amy, there's three kind of large Arias in the
(20:15):
show. The first is an unknown woman
based on the sundry women that are all over the records.
The second is a character named Marian Tweedy.
Who is one of the people's witches but was not one of the
women identified in the big people's witch hunt?
And it so happens that she had not been uncovered until our
play came out. And the people's researchers
(20:38):
said that's so great. We hadn't really talked about
Marianne Tweedy yet, so that waskind of cool.
And then the third one is IsabelGowdy, the famous Isabel Gowdy
who came into being because Maggie said after she met the
saw the Arias from the for the unknown woman in the and for
Marian, we need a baddie. We need somebody who has agency.
(21:00):
And obviously that was Isabel and that was a great, great ask
from Maggie, really, because as you're hearing, we're talking
about this piece, we're talking about kind of the disturbing and
the trauma and these very challenging subjects.
As a writer, there's this kind of fine line you you walk to
say, how can we address these things and also give our
(21:23):
audience a relief, Give them a valve, give them a way to learn
things and hear things and observe things without also
being totally traumatized by thework itself.
Being in a place where they can lean in and then also lean out a
little bit. So that's kind of the tension
(21:45):
that I feel, but I just wanted to go back to the accused for a
second. We had discussed making three
different puppets, and then Madeline actually modelled her
after one of the actors in the original Enbrel production.
And then we decided that she actually represented every
woman. And I wonder, Amy and Jess, if
(22:06):
that every woman feeling, if it is that we all see this puppet
and we do see ourselves in them in the rehearsal room or in the
watching of it. Well, it's a testament to the
puppet design because it's a very tricky thing to design
something, a puppet or a mask that has enough specificity in
(22:30):
their features and yet doesn't crossover into being decorative.
So that there's an emergence of something, but it isn't quite
finished, and it just reaches just a little bit outside of the
puppet so that the audience can project onto the puppet, right?
So there's enough empty space, the puppet that the audience
(22:51):
projects and they see themselves.
And to me, that's always the difference between a good
puppet, A puppet that you can really bring to life, and a
puppet that is difficult to bring to life.
It's that space. And I do think it's a particular
challenge to be able to represent three different women.
And that puppet is neutral enough and yet specific enough
(23:13):
that it does both jobs in this really spectacular way.
So yes, we have been finding really wonderful ways for her to
represent all three of the womenwho have these Arias. 4 Really,
because there's the Farmer's Wife as well.
That's that's the thing. It's also testament to Laurie's
writing. Yes.
Has has that same. Thing.
It's not just, it's not just thethree historical women.
(23:37):
And it's interesting too. We've talked about it.
My cast, I had six women and three men in the show and there
are these other characters in the show that are kind of
television personalities, but one woman spells the other woman
out a little bit and there's thesurvivor and the terror in her.
(24:00):
And then in in the final moment,which of course we go to a witch
burning after we have the pregame show, which is burn live
and scene 9, we have the see if 15 has the burning.
And there's a solo that Lori hadpermission to use some music
that was inspired by the Witchesof Scotland podcast.
(24:24):
And I had that music, which is sort of ambient.
I had it translated into a cappella music for my cast to
sing together. And there was a solo voice.
And the actress who played the farmer's wife, I made her kind
of into the Bard because after the first scene, we never see
the farmer's wife again except in the body of the accused, the
(24:46):
puppet. And so I had her coming on and
singing each new scene on with the theme.
And at the end, she and the kindof telecaster who's been
accused, who's been possessed bythe spirit of the future and
then accused of witchcraft, I have them singing the accused on
(25:08):
into her place on the pyre. I wanted as badly as Laurie did.
I felt called by the peace to give these accused women who are
thrown under in the peace a voice.
Even at the end, I felt that theaccused deserved an elegy.
Even though Laurie didn't put a song in there, I put one in.
(25:32):
But that's also the style of thework is story theater, which is
something that Laurie and Jeff and I have deep history in and
can breathe with the music that you want to kind of swim in with
it. Lori's writing lends itself.
To this is so interesting because you're we're talking
about the playbook. This is also a thing about
(25:53):
process for a playwright. If you're a lucky playwright
like me, you get to keep workingon a piece after you finish it.
You get to keep going with it. And then for what you're
witnessing is me collaborating with two other artists who know
me and my work and my aesthetic and my style so deeply that
they're getting things, but they're also asking me questions
(26:16):
in the way that we've been asking each other questions for
years and years and years. And then a really easy
collaboration with Madeline. So it's this is this piece.
Just in some ways it feels like it has a trajectory of its own.
And I'm just saying yes to everything that comes through it
because I feel like I don't know, there's something deeply
flowing through the work in thispiece and in the producing of it
(26:39):
and in the working on it. And I just feel really grateful
to both you, Amy, both you, bothof you, Amy and Jeff.
I can't wait to see the Chicago production.
I want to hear about Jeff's music choices because he's a
gifted musician and composer, and I know he had some really
unusual inspiration for it. I'm not necessarily unusual
(27:01):
inspiration, but I had going back.
I do play Celtic music and in a previous life I was in an Irish
Scottish music band and I alwaysloved comparing the Irish music
with the Scottish music. The Scottish music was always a
little bit darker and had a little bit more open chords and
(27:23):
there was actually more harmonizing in Scottish songs.
And so I went with that and, andI'm doing the sound design and
the composition using the tuningthat a lot of Scottish musicians
currently use, which is the DADGAD, DADGAD tuning and put a
lot of electronics on it. And so I've been playing
(27:44):
creating atmosphere with these big open chords and, and using
it as the bedrock for the two because we don't have much,
we're not going to be able to have haze or anything like that,
but I'll create the atmosphere with this with sound and I'll be
able to feed in the the song that Laurie got permission to
use at the end. It's a healing hero tune.
(28:05):
Sarah and Josh, Yeah. Oh, you guys know Healing Hero?
Yeah, Witches of Scotland. As Laurie mentioned, they were
inspired healing arrows, so there's the Witches of Scotland
episode with them. And they did that entire album
right. Yeah, I used 2 songs off that
album. I used the I had used AF layer
(28:29):
and and it's in 6th part harmony.
And then I used I I did a speed up version of another piece
which and if I am a witch, will the devil help me know that one?
And we did the opening bit. We've created a song.
It's a song that's an opening number.
The Walking. Song, walking song, yes.
(28:50):
And there's a lot of sort of rounds inside of it.
So there's this sort of electronic guitar.
There's like this distant taps, you know, distant Scottish
drumming way off in the distance.
And then the singing. And within the song, every once
in a while, they'll start a round and it will create this
beautiful spiral. And yeah, it's really pretty
(29:11):
gorgeous. I took wait to see the Madeleine
built a whole new set of bird puppets in his production.
You have new jackdaws. My students were the jackdaws.
They were great jackdaws. Amy Madeline builds a new set of
a different style of jackdaws this production that are just
stunning. They're gorgeous.
(29:32):
And I saw a video of you guys rehearsing a dance with those,
Jeff. So.
And, you know, I think that kindof people don't people are
surprised by what happens in this play.
I mean, Sarah and Josh, you readit.
It's even changed since you've seen it.
Amy did an immersive production where people in the audience
were projected into the scenery.And Jeff is kind of doing a
(29:53):
hybrid of that. And that's kind of one of the
areas that I push more into the media and the television aspect
of it. I just, I hope, I hope you get
to see it sometime. Yes, it's so hard to not have
seen it. I will tell you, but it's so
hearing you guys today speak. About.
What it has become, what it's becoming, it's so exciting
(30:17):
because when we first met a couple years ago, he told us
it's still alive. And that wasn't just a
statement, you really meant it. And it's very evident.
So it's amazing to hear about what it is right now, what it's
been, what it's becoming. This is really incredible.
(30:39):
People have shocked, shocked my audiences were overwhelmingly
shocked that state sponsored sexual torture existed for 150
years and was a public event. And the the idea of which
burnings kind of American culture sort of holds it
(31:02):
slightly. The fact that it's this is a
little emotional. You said you'd lived in the Gulf
South. I mean, people are still being
hung and burned today here in the here and now.
That's you say in your play, Laurie.
(31:27):
And there is a coda in the piece.
Or as we rise to the final burning, the women's chorus does
speak of all the in my play, thewomen's Chorus.
But the chorus of voices does speak of the contemporary
persecution of people and the use of witchcraft as an actual
state crime. And as I breathe this in, in
(31:53):
this moment that doesn't feel that far off.
There's a. Strong.
In the state in which I live, there is a very strong
theological anner carried about all the time in public life that
(32:17):
you have to fly under. And I'm an academic at a private
institution and I feel that weight.
I'm not making that up. Anybody who's from here will
tell you in the contemporary. I mean, you brought up the East
Wing, Laurie, if we're going to talk about that, like the
contemporary brand of white supremacy that exists in America
at this time is born out of Louisiana.
(32:39):
Steve Scalise is from live 6 miles from me.
Amy Coney Barrett went to the high school that my next door
neighbor went to. Mike Johnson's district includes
my father in law's hometown. Like they're here, they're not
going anywhere, and they believein witches.
(33:03):
Right. We've been, I can't even say
we're surprised by the rhetoric that comes out that literally is
demonizing people and calling people demons and demon
inspired. And you know, it easily could
switch over to that label of just you're a witch, you're a
(33:24):
witch. They, I mean, they were calling
Harris a witch in the campaign. They were calling her a witch.
And we've seen some incidents insome southern towns.
Not that it's just a southern thing.
It's also in the West, I'd have to say, but we've seen in some
southern towns where people willgo out and protest neo paganism
(33:48):
and modern day witchcraft practices and it intimidates
people very easily. So we can still see a lot of
that same kind of persecution that's been around.
Sarah mentioned witch hunts havebeen going on for hundreds,
maybe thousands of years. The other thing is we can.
(34:12):
I mean, Laurie's play is really super factual.
It's. Packed.
Full of nutrients, but it's really entertaining because as
everybody knows, people don't remember what you say.
They remember how you make them feel.
And that's the beautiful thing about Laurie's play is it gives
(34:33):
us. There's enough humor in it.
There's a lot of humor in it with these sublime moments of
poetry and lyricism and and songand silliness.
And I have no doubt Jeff's play is even more physical and dancey
than mine was because I was working with untrained
undergraduates and he has this incredible ensemble of the
(34:56):
professionals. But within all of that
entertainment, there's facts served up and people walk away
chewing that information. What do you hope people are
going to get from your show, Jeff?
I mean, my, my, my audience was university kids, so I had a
different goal. But talk to me about that.
(35:19):
I think that most of the people who come, we are hoping to
branch into a new group of folkspotentially here and and most of
our plays have been very kind offemme forward.
And so we're building a community, building an audience
from that, although we're still very small, there are several
(35:40):
kind of shops around Chicago. There's bookstores, occult
bookstores, and there's a lot ofassociations and groups and
Facebook groups and things like that that are in Chicago that
are connected to modern day Pagan practices and witchcraft.
And so we're trying to sort of branch and, and let those folks
(36:03):
know that this play is happening.
I mean, it was a little bit by accident that we're here around
in the Halloween time. So sometimes that we open on the
6th, we open after how November.20.
And we run through the yeah, November 6th by 25, yes.
And we run through the 16th. So it's really just a two
weekend run. But where is it?
(36:26):
It is at the Den Theater on Milwaukee.
Where can we find ticket information?
Well, you can find ticket information at the Den website.
Dentheatre.com. Yeah, the Den theatre.com
really, and we have our own, we have our own little page within
that, but it's that's a long complicated one.
(36:47):
So the Den theatre.com will get you there and just put prick in
the search. So anyway, yes, we are the Den
Theatre from November 6th through the 16th dentheatre.com.
You can get your tickets. And we do have a couple of
people in the cast who are practicing, who are involved in
(37:07):
some Pagan practices and theater.
If you talk about the dehumanization that is going on
right now in the world, in our culture, the the very
intentional dehumanization for to, to gain power, the thing
that we can do to resist that isto rehumanize.
And there is no other better wayto do that as a group than going
(37:33):
to the theater because you know,while you're in that room
together, it's hard for that power structure to touch you.
And it can't be run by AI because if it was AI, it would
not be theater anymore, right? So theater, we have to just keep
making theater and been creatingthings and being together and
collaborating audience and in inlive places, in real life
(37:57):
places. And that act in and of itself is
an act of rehumanization every time we step in and see a play
together and do a play together.So the fact it's just this
delicious sort of double Decker benefit to our own humanization
that we are also trying to rehumanize the memory of these
poor people that were persecuted.
(38:17):
And we're also rehumanizing ourselves by attending theater,
and very lucky that we get to doit.
I'm going to try to come up and see it.
Yay. Nice.
Yeah. I'm just so grateful that you
guys are doing the rehumanization because even
history, our memory itself is under assault right now.
(38:42):
And we have to speak up for these historic victims and put
that flesh back on them and makethem whole humans again and
realize they're not these supposed witches aren't
caricatures or just data in thisdatabase.
They were human beings and they suffered at the hands of
(39:05):
oppressors. So we have to acknowledge that
before we can move forward, I think.
Bringing the play involves bringing these witches or these
people who are accused of being witches and who were executed,
bringing them back into existence, bringing them back
into 3 dimensional reality, which is a tricky business and
(39:27):
it's fraught with ethical issues.
And the people, the characters in the play are faced with these
emotional issues and these ethical issues of like, oh, are
we doing the right thing here? Are we?
And these are the questions thatwe ask as theatre makers all the
time. Is this thing that we're doing
the is it doing harm? Is it doing good?
(39:48):
What are we doing? So we are in this room,
rehearsal room every day, portraying characters who are in
that process of figuring out whether it's right to bring back
these beings so that they can, you know, for the good of
writing the record, for the goodof the monument of memory.
(40:10):
That's the journey of the plays that the women who are conjuring
or bringing these these human beings back to life are on their
journey of Are we? What are we exactly doing?
Are we hurting these people? And but in the end, I think that
everybody realizes that if the message, the memory is the
important thing and the accuracyof who these people are and how
(40:32):
they should be remembered. It's really exciting to see this
play have its own life and reinterpretation and the
aliveness and what I hope is it resonates in a way that feels
relevant to now to the audience that I think that there's many
direct interpretation is of the work and those that can be
(40:52):
deeply personal for individuals.So I just hope that it speaks to
people and. Sparks.
Something I would just like to say thank you for the
opportunity to talk in this way.This is the first time that Jeff
and Amy and I have talked since Amy had her production and
Jeff's been rehearsal. And I don't know if you have
(41:15):
listeners who are also theater practitioners, but if anyone's
interested in this piece, pleasefind me and reach out to me.
One of the things I love about this particular piece and Amy
spoke to it when she said story theater, you can fill things in.
This can be done with a lot of different sizes of casts and
configurations. And I'm still, I still feel like
(41:36):
I'm making discoveries. And when I see Jeff's audience,
seeing Jeff's actors, I'll be learning some more about what
this play means beyond me, beyond what it means to the
observer. And I do hope that it, I do hope
and believe that it will go on beyond what I think it's
possible. So.
(41:59):
I want to speak to the fact that85 people saw it in Wellington,
New Zealand, and three differentdirectors came up to me
afterwards going, where'd you find the play?
They all want to know more aboutit.
They all want to do it because it's an ensemble based cast and
it offers it has this flexibility and fluidity.
But yeah, it's very, it can be done with many sizes of casts
(42:24):
and many, many iterations. It's also just also just really
fun. It's a fun show.
Lori is a fun writer. She's got a great voice.
One of the reasons Jeff and I jumped on it, not just because
we get to work with Lori, but because her writing is so damn
good. And my students, most of whom
(42:45):
are not theatre majors, I don't teach at a Conservatory.
My students are art majors and finance majors and sociology
majors. They quote the show to me still,
just just said it's tricky business.
And all I could hear was them saying pecky business Ryan into
which is tricky business. I don't know, there's just so
(43:08):
many great lines in it that you'll walk away enjoying.
And sublime, silly, funny pops all straight out of Lori's
delicious self. Everyone should have friends as
lovely as my friends, Amy. Thank you, Amy.
(43:32):
Lovely. Yeah.
And I would just say to the theater makers and magicians and
alchemists and witches in the good sense of the word, we're
all of this cut from the same cloth.
We're creating magic in spaces and.
And that magic, and I'll just goback on that harp again, that
(43:52):
magic is humanizing. It isn't dehumanizing.
This is your opportunity. Get your tickets at The Den
theater.com. That's THEAT.
RE. Duck go to Chicago and see the
play. Prick.
Don't miss out, get those tickets today and have a great
(44:15):
today and a beautiful tomorrow.
Welcome back to The Thing about Witch Hunts.
I'm Josh Hutchinson, and today we're returning to a story we
first shared back in Episode 47 in August 2023.
We're talking about the play Prick again, and here we're now
in Episode 166. And I'm Sarah Jack Prick is a
(00:22):
powerful theatrical production about the Scottish witch trials,
written by playwright Lori Flanagan Heggie and originally
directed by Maggie Griebel. The play tells the stories of
women from the Scottish witch trials, including an unknown
woman whose name has been lost to history, Marian Tweedy, who
was pricked but never confessed,and the infamous Isabel Gowdy.
(00:47):
Using haunting puppetry by artist Madeleine Helling, dark
comedy and contemporary relevance, Prick draws a
powerful line from the pricking and quarrelsome dames of the
past to modern misogyny. Since its premiere at the 2023
Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Prickhas travelled to London, New
Orleans, New Zealand and is now heading to Chicago for two
(01:12):
weekends, November 6th through 16th at the Den Theatre.
Today we're joined by returning Minnesota guest playwright Lori
Flanagan Heggie and puppet artist Madeline Healey.
Lori is wearing the Witches of Scotland memorial tartan like
these. We also have director Jeff Mills
(01:33):
from Chicago's Proboscis TheatreCompany and director Amy Chafee,
who's an associate professor at Tulane University in New
Orleans, LA, who directed the play there in New Orleans and
also in New Zealand. So let's find out what's
happened with Prick since we last spoke.
Welcome to The Thing About WitchHunts podcast.
(01:55):
Returning guests Lori Flanagan, Hegy and Madeline Helling.
And welcome to our new guests, Amy Chaffee and Jeff Mills.
Please let us know. Who you are?
And what we need to know about you.
I'll start. My name is Lori Flanagan Hegy,
and I'm the playwright of Prick,which was inspired by the
(02:15):
Witches of Scotland campaign forjustice against the accused
witches in the early modern period.
And it premiered at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in
2023. When you so kindly had us on the
first time we talked about this play.
And since then, it has been in the US and it's in rehearsal
right now with my colleague and friend Jeff Mills, who is
(02:37):
directing it in Chicago. I'll take that.
I am Jeff Mills Co, artistic director of Proboscis Theatre
Company in Chicago. We are a rough and tumble,
scrappy Little Theatre company ensemble.
And Lori and I and Amy, we've all been friends for a very long
(03:00):
time, 35 years, something like that.
And it's just when I heard that when Lori had written this play
about the witch trials in Scotland, it is historical
territory that our company is sort of has covered.
And to approach that from a slightly different perspective
was very exciting. Fact that it was Lori was very
(03:22):
exciting. And the fact that we have an
opportunity to set the record straight a little bit to a small
number of folks is also very excited.
Since I got thrown a little energy there, I'll step in.
I'm Amy Chafee. I'm a professor at Tulane
University in voice and acting, and while I predominantly coach
(03:44):
voice and do accents and dialects and film and
television, Lori sent me this script saying, hey, if you know
anybody. And then this opportunity opened
up where I could direct a project for the first time in
almost nine years at this university.
I got a slot at directing, whichis actually originally how Jeff
(04:04):
and Lori and I met was I was directing way back when, but the
play suited everything that I needed.
And then I found out Jeff was already doing it.
And I was like, oh, but then because I'm at a university and
I had funding and everything kind of built in, I slid in and
I got to do the North American premiere, which was at a
(04:25):
university. Jeff is going to do the
professional premiere. And then I was able to take the
show with the entire student cast, 9 undergraduates, to a
theatre festival in New Zealand.So we also got to do the Oceania
premiere. And we all used Madeline's
puppet. I'm Madeline Helly and I'm a
puppet. Artist in Minneapolis, and I'm a
(04:46):
friend and neighbor of Laurie. She approached me to work on
this piece that she was writing,and it was very easy to say.
It was very inspiring to tell a truthful story that's been
suppressed. Thank you everyone for those
introductions. It's very nice to see you again
(05:07):
or to meet you for the first time.
So thank you all for bringing your amazing talent and
experience to the show. Lori, it's been 2 years since we
spoke about PRICK. Can you refresh our memories of
what is PRICK? Yes, So Prick is a very
(05:27):
anachronistic play about the Scottish witch trials.
And by necronistic I mean that it's set in the then and the now
and everywhere in between. And that's been one of the fun
things about working, continuingto work on it as I've continued
to press more into that aspect of this piece as I've been
continuing to develop it. It was originally produced at
(05:49):
the Edinburgh Fringe Festival with director Maggie Gravel, who
actually instigated the project for her master's thesis.
And we had the luxury of performing it in Edmiro for a
lot of the people that I was using as research for this
piece. So we actually met Claire
(06:09):
Mitchell and Zoeven Zitatsi. They were at the first
performance. Judith Langland Scott came to
see it and talked to us afterwards about what we got
right and the one thing that shewanted changed, which was a
pretty small thing, which was great, it had to do with the
fairies being called fairies. She said no, they would only
call them the good people, so the good neighbors.
So it's not a substantive issue with the history of the play.
(06:32):
But since that time, I feel likeI have had the opportunity to
really continue to deepen my understanding of this subject
and the impact that it's having in our current world.
I've never had a play that people have been more interested
in than this piece. Everywhere I go, people want to
(06:53):
talk to me about it. They want to know if I know what
the word means. Prick.
That's a people have a response to that title and they want to
know why I named it. It's.
Dirty. They want to know why I used
that word. And so it kind of leads to this
open conversation. No matter who I'm in
relationship with and discussionabout the play, whether it's a
theater person or a friend from my childhood or somebody that I
(07:17):
know online, everybody wants to know more about the subject.
And much like the Witches of Scotland campaign and the tartan
that they came out with, every time I have a conversation with
somebody, it's an opportunity totalk about things that are
happening in our world today, misogyny today, the way that
women are being diminished exponentially by the minute in
(07:39):
our country, and also about what's happening around the
world in present time around this subject.
So for me, it's been, yes, it had a a wonderful production in
Enboro, but it just keeps expanding and that my brain
keeps expanding around the project.
And I think the the world of this play keeps expanding.
So it's been fascinating to me to have American students and
(08:02):
American artists working on the piece because that was what my
first curiosity was as an American playwright.
First of all, I wondered, do I have the right to write this
piece? And I feel like I've been
endowed with that and have been in relationship with Scottish
people who are encouraging the project, encouraging it to go
forward. And I really am just tickled
(08:23):
every single time there's a new learning or a new kind of
sharing about the subject or discovery that happens with
American artists. The very interesting question
you bring up Lori, about do I have the right to write about
this? One of the reasons why I picked
it for my directing slot is, youknow, representation and giving
(08:45):
voice to a community is a very contentious thing anymore.
And my mom's from Scotland. I have three of my 4
grandparents were born there by process of elimination.
I too. I'm also like a descendant of
people who endured the witch trials.
I don't have. We don't have enough records
(09:07):
from the poor villages that my family are from to trace back
anything really. But considering the numbers,
like there was only 1/4 of a million people live during the
witch trials of Scotland, and during that 150 years, like one
in 15 were involved, like it's very, very likely that at least
(09:30):
my ancestors attended new people.
Yeah, etcetera. So I thought, I have a right to
direct this play. No one can say, woo, you
shouldn't be doing that play because I've had colleagues who
were called out for directing plays that were not about their
culture. And I was like, I got this,
which actually matters where I work, and New Orleans, which is
(09:52):
Black dominant community, you have a lot of people whose
voices have been misrepresented and appropriated, and a lot of
sort of cultural violence has accumulated in the community
here. So I was sort of relieved and
proud to bring the story here. Yet it was something that was
very relatable. It's a deeply spiritual
community here on the witchy level, Like it's part of our
(10:16):
cultural exports, if you will, in New Orleans.
A lot of people come here for the voodoo stay, for the
alcoholism. I know, I'm just kidding.
But so there was interest in it on that level.
Like people who were apothecary owners showed up to see the
show, people who are practicing who we were speaking before the
(10:36):
show started about official and unofficial tours.
I mean, there are actual witch tours in town and there are
rites and rituals that happen all the time very bluntly.
And that was interesting that myshow was interesting to them.
I had a student, I also want to say I had a student who was my
(10:57):
dramaturg and she was also an architecture student.
She took it upon herself to create an actual physical
monument to the current number of names on the witches of
Scotland. Yeah, pulled out every single
name, which is nearly 5000 and created a monument and put it in
(11:20):
our lobby. Yeah, that was pretty profound.
You know, it's interesting, Amy,because I've really tuned into
the Witches of Scotland campaigners, Zoe and Claire
talking about this very fact because a lot of people win this
tart and came out and I'm obsessed about it because I just
put it on for the first time today.
But people had questions about whether they had the right to
wear it. And they have talked, spoken on
their podcast about how if you have an interest in righting the
(11:44):
wrong, that that makes you part of the clan.
And I take that to heart. And also as somebody who is a
writer, I have always worked from a place, well, not always,
but I've I began, I became a writer with an interest in
historical events and using thatas a springboard towards my
(12:05):
work. And this, this mantra that
they're, they've been saying lately, Zoe and Claire have been
saying remembrance is resistanceto me, that remembrance has
resistance motto applies to our present moment in our present
country. So to me, to be working with
this material in a country that I do not have ancestral ties to,
(12:27):
to my knowledge, I have big tiesto what's going on here.
And to me, the idea of a prickerwith the title prick comes from
both the object, a pricking instrument, and the person who
did the actual pricking of a woman looking for a double S
mark on her body. The idea of that pricking to me
is a very contemporary thing. Like we are being pricked all
(12:48):
the time. The East wing of the White House
got torn down. That's where the women worked.
That's where the first ladies were.
That, like, erasure of their existence from the White House
grounds, it feels like an act ofviolence.
And to me, that's like the pricking that happened yesterday
or the day before. Our whole culture's
consciousness, Every woman in America got pricked.
(13:11):
Can I also add to that, it's really interesting the cultural
clash that I had when I took theshow to another colonized place,
because within the show you dealwith the fact that England is
colonizing Scotland and Scotlandis a colonized land.
And then they took the warrior men of Scotland and sent them
(13:33):
abroad to colonize every other place.
And when we went to New Zealand,the site of the most horrific
colonization, the site of some of the worst depredations
against the indigenous culture, were in Dunedin, which is the
Gaelic or the Gaelic word for Edinburgh, and that's in South
(13:53):
Island. We performed it in Wellington,
in the colonial capital of the country, and we did it at a
conference that was very focusedon this melding of Maudie
culture with the acting and voice techniques that we were
doing. And then I brought in this play
about the depredation and silencing of voices due to
(14:18):
colonialism, but the white people there were the colonizers
instead of the. But it was this crazy layering.
And I got some very interesting feedback on that from people of
different racist cultures, nationalities, identities and
generations in New Zealand. So it was this appropriation
(14:40):
combination. Very curious.
Jeff, are you buckled in and ready for your ride on this
'cause you can hear like how impactful it is and you've been
working with it. So chime in and tell us what
what this has been like for you.Yeah, I, I mean, the, we're in
(15:03):
the middle of rehearsals now, sowe're deep into staging the
amazing puppets and grappling every single rehearsal with some
very challenging and difficult material.
It is really interesting becauseLori felt like there needed to
be a puppet who bore the brunt of the pricking of the actual
(15:29):
pricking, the violent action of the play so that we wouldn't
have to put an actor in that position and to sort of
experience that trauma. And we, we were just working the
scene last night and it was quite disturbing how upset
people got from watching the puppet being, and we were there
(15:53):
like experimenting and very, andthat's such a hard place to
rehearse in because everybody's stimulated by, by the things
that we are have to do with the puppet.
And in order to get to the rightchoice, we have to experiment
with a whole range of choices interms of visually, how does it
(16:15):
work? How can we tell this visual
story of this puppet being abused or of a puppet
representing a woman being abused in this way?
And it's very upsetting. We have to continually kind of
take breaks and check in becausethe cast is mostly women and
female representing folks. The play is very fun for the
(16:36):
most part because it has a satirical layer to it.
And the and the puppets reveal this sort of worlds of kind of
joy and playfulness. And then we get to the big punch
in the stomach sections where weactually have this man who is
got this instrument, a kind of agiant pricker that's made-up of
(16:57):
the same material as the puppet itself.
And we've got several of them. One is smaller, one is medium,
and one is 1 is very big, which brings it into this very absurd
world in the act of trying to get it right.
And we want to be as respectful as we can to the women in the
room, to all of us in the room, to the people who've been
(17:19):
accused, and to Laurie and her words and to the puppet.
Because the puppet has life. The puppet is all of these
journeys and all the people thathave in this sympathetic way,
right, that have used and works and made that puppet come to
life. All of their energy is inside
that puppet. And so there is a respect for
(17:43):
wanting to treat the puppet well, but knowing that the
puppet has to sacrifice a littlebit of that well-being to tell
the story, which is, you know, Imean, that's what we do as
actors all the time when it's a hard story to tell and we put
ourselves in those position. But there's something that's
even that when you see it being done to a puppet that uncanny
(18:07):
valley way, it's kind of extra disturbing.
So it a lot of stuff. My cast didn't want the anywhere
near her. We ended up doing the gesture at
a 12 foot remove and that made my a DS.
Still need to leave the room every time because the power of
(18:28):
imagination and the power of Madeline's creation is so
profound. She's, she's haunting.
I had some designers that I needed to work with at my
university and in the community.There were a lot of puppet
people here in New Orleans and they came to see it.
And as soon as they were ready, their knives were out.
(18:49):
They were like, we'll see. And as soon as they saw your
creation, Madeline, they were all no.
It's really fun to hear you guystalking about the experience
with the puppet because we just had this week in Edinburgh,
which honestly, the puppet was still being built at that point
where we had physically had our hands on it.
And then she's come back to me for repairs and it's like, oh,
(19:10):
hey, little traveler. And then I get to, you know,
just like touch her up. But there hasn't been much to
do. I mean, she's been well cared
for. I'm probably the hardest on her
I guess. But it is.
I think that when just to like speak to the articulation that
happens when you're puppeting islike even that effort, like
(19:31):
breath is an effort. So you have to give it lice.
And in doing that, there's like something I love about puppets
is their ability to draw attention to something really
simple, like how much that effort takes because you have to
make it an animation to give it lice.
And then you are suspending belief for the audience in those
(19:55):
moments. Well, and we very specifically
when we first were talking aboutthis puppet, Madeleine
considered building 3 different puppets for each of the three
main women who are represented in the show.
So the three main characters whohave what Amy titled Arias,
which I love that Amy, there's three kind of large Arias in the
(20:15):
show. The first is an unknown woman
based on the sundry women that are all over the records.
The second is a character named Marian Tweedy.
Who is one of the people's witches but was not one of the
women identified in the big people's witch hunt?
And it so happens that she had not been uncovered until our
play came out. And the people's researchers
(20:38):
said that's so great. We hadn't really talked about
Marianne Tweedy yet, so that waskind of cool.
And then the third one is IsabelGowdy, the famous Isabel Gowdy
who came into being because Maggie said after she met the
saw the Arias from the for the unknown woman in the and for
Marian, we need a baddie. We need somebody who has agency.
(21:00):
And obviously that was Isabel and that was a great, great ask
from Maggie, really, because as you're hearing, we're talking
about this piece, we're talking about kind of the disturbing and
the trauma and these very challenging subjects.
As a writer, there's this kind of fine line you you walk to
say, how can we address these things and also give our
(21:23):
audience a relief, Give them a valve, give them a way to learn
things and hear things and observe things without also
being totally traumatized by thework itself.
Being in a place where they can lean in and then also lean out a
little bit. So that's kind of the tension
(21:45):
that I feel, but I just wanted to go back to the accused for a
second. We had discussed making three
different puppets, and then Madeline actually modelled her
after one of the actors in the original Enbrel production.
And then we decided that she actually represented every
woman. And I wonder, Amy and Jess, if
(22:06):
that every woman feeling, if it is that we all see this puppet
and we do see ourselves in them in the rehearsal room or in the
watching of it. Well, it's a testament to the
puppet design because it's a very tricky thing to design
something, a puppet or a mask that has enough specificity in
(22:30):
their features and yet doesn't crossover into being decorative.
So that there's an emergence of something, but it isn't quite
finished, and it just reaches just a little bit outside of the
puppet so that the audience can project onto the puppet, right?
So there's enough empty space, the puppet that the audience
(22:51):
projects and they see themselves.
And to me, that's always the difference between a good
puppet, A puppet that you can really bring to life, and a
puppet that is difficult to bring to life.
It's that space. And I do think it's a particular
challenge to be able to represent three different women.
And that puppet is neutral enough and yet specific enough
(23:13):
that it does both jobs in this really spectacular way.
So yes, we have been finding really wonderful ways for her to
represent all three of the womenwho have these Arias. 4 Really,
because there's the Farmer's Wife as well.
That's that's the thing. It's also testament to Laurie's
writing. Yes.
Has has that same. Thing.
It's not just, it's not just thethree historical women.
(23:37):
And it's interesting too. We've talked about it.
My cast, I had six women and three men in the show and there
are these other characters in the show that are kind of
television personalities, but one woman spells the other woman
out a little bit and there's thesurvivor and the terror in her.
(24:00):
And then in in the final moment,which of course we go to a witch
burning after we have the pregame show, which is burn live
and scene 9, we have the see if 15 has the burning.
And there's a solo that Lori hadpermission to use some music
that was inspired by the Witchesof Scotland podcast.
(24:24):
And I had that music, which is sort of ambient.
I had it translated into a cappella music for my cast to
sing together. And there was a solo voice.
And the actress who played the farmer's wife, I made her kind
of into the Bard because after the first scene, we never see
the farmer's wife again except in the body of the accused, the
(24:46):
puppet. And so I had her coming on and
singing each new scene on with the theme.
And at the end, she and the kindof telecaster who's been
accused, who's been possessed bythe spirit of the future and
then accused of witchcraft, I have them singing the accused on
(25:08):
into her place on the pyre. I wanted as badly as Laurie did.
I felt called by the peace to give these accused women who are
thrown under in the peace a voice.
Even at the end, I felt that theaccused deserved an elegy.
Even though Laurie didn't put a song in there, I put one in.
(25:32):
But that's also the style of thework is story theater, which is
something that Laurie and Jeff and I have deep history in and
can breathe with the music that you want to kind of swim in with
it. Lori's writing lends itself.
To this is so interesting because you're we're talking
about the playbook. This is also a thing about
(25:53):
process for a playwright. If you're a lucky playwright
like me, you get to keep workingon a piece after you finish it.
You get to keep going with it. And then for what you're
witnessing is me collaborating with two other artists who know
me and my work and my aesthetic and my style so deeply that
they're getting things, but they're also asking me questions
(26:16):
in the way that we've been asking each other questions for
years and years and years. And then a really easy
collaboration with Madeline. So it's this is this piece.
Just in some ways it feels like it has a trajectory of its own.
And I'm just saying yes to everything that comes through it
because I feel like I don't know, there's something deeply
flowing through the work in thispiece and in the producing of it
(26:39):
and in the working on it. And I just feel really grateful
to both you, Amy, both you, bothof you, Amy and Jeff.
I can't wait to see the Chicago production.
I want to hear about Jeff's music choices because he's a
gifted musician and composer, and I know he had some really
unusual inspiration for it. I'm not necessarily unusual
(27:01):
inspiration, but I had going back.
I do play Celtic music and in a previous life I was in an Irish
Scottish music band and I alwaysloved comparing the Irish music
with the Scottish music. The Scottish music was always a
little bit darker and had a little bit more open chords and
(27:23):
there was actually more harmonizing in Scottish songs.
And so I went with that and, andI'm doing the sound design and
the composition using the tuningthat a lot of Scottish musicians
currently use, which is the DADGAD, DADGAD tuning and put a
lot of electronics on it. And so I've been playing
(27:44):
creating atmosphere with these big open chords and, and using
it as the bedrock for the two because we don't have much,
we're not going to be able to have haze or anything like that,
but I'll create the atmosphere with this with sound and I'll be
able to feed in the the song that Laurie got permission to
use at the end. It's a healing hero tune.
(28:05):
Sarah and Josh, Yeah. Oh, you guys know Healing Hero?
Yeah, Witches of Scotland. As Laurie mentioned, they were
inspired healing arrows, so there's the Witches of Scotland
episode with them. And they did that entire album
right. Yeah, I used 2 songs off that
album. I used the I had used AF layer
(28:29):
and and it's in 6th part harmony.
And then I used I I did a speed up version of another piece
which and if I am a witch, will the devil help me know that one?
And we did the opening bit. We've created a song.
It's a song that's an opening number.
The Walking. Song, walking song, yes.
(28:50):
And there's a lot of sort of rounds inside of it.
So there's this sort of electronic guitar.
There's like this distant taps, you know, distant Scottish
drumming way off in the distance.
And then the singing. And within the song, every once
in a while, they'll start a round and it will create this
beautiful spiral. And yeah, it's really pretty
(29:11):
gorgeous. I took wait to see the Madeleine
built a whole new set of bird puppets in his production.
You have new jackdaws. My students were the jackdaws.
They were great jackdaws. Amy Madeline builds a new set of
a different style of jackdaws this production that are just
stunning. They're gorgeous.
(29:32):
And I saw a video of you guys rehearsing a dance with those,
Jeff. So.
And, you know, I think that kindof people don't people are
surprised by what happens in this play.
I mean, Sarah and Josh, you readit.
It's even changed since you've seen it.
Amy did an immersive production where people in the audience
were projected into the scenery.And Jeff is kind of doing a
(29:53):
hybrid of that. And that's kind of one of the
areas that I push more into the media and the television aspect
of it. I just, I hope, I hope you get
to see it sometime. Yes, it's so hard to not have
seen it. I will tell you, but it's so
hearing you guys today speak. About.
What it has become, what it's becoming, it's so exciting
(30:17):
because when we first met a couple years ago, he told us
it's still alive. And that wasn't just a
statement, you really meant it. And it's very evident.
So it's amazing to hear about what it is right now, what it's
been, what it's becoming. This is really incredible.
(30:39):
People have shocked, shocked my audiences were overwhelmingly
shocked that state sponsored sexual torture existed for 150
years and was a public event. And the the idea of which
burnings kind of American culture sort of holds it
(31:02):
slightly. The fact that it's this is a
little emotional. You said you'd lived in the Gulf
South. I mean, people are still being
hung and burned today here in the here and now.
That's you say in your play, Laurie.
(31:27):
And there is a coda in the piece.
Or as we rise to the final burning, the women's chorus does
speak of all the in my play, thewomen's Chorus.
But the chorus of voices does speak of the contemporary
persecution of people and the use of witchcraft as an actual
state crime. And as I breathe this in, in
(31:53):
this moment that doesn't feel that far off.
There's a. Strong.
In the state in which I live, there is a very strong
theological anner carried about all the time in public life that
(32:17):
you have to fly under. And I'm an academic at a private
institution and I feel that weight.
I'm not making that up. Anybody who's from here will
tell you in the contemporary. I mean, you brought up the East
Wing, Laurie, if we're going to talk about that, like the
contemporary brand of white supremacy that exists in America
at this time is born out of Louisiana.
(32:39):
Steve Scalise is from live 6 miles from me.
Amy Coney Barrett went to the high school that my next door
neighbor went to. Mike Johnson's district includes
my father in law's hometown. Like they're here, they're not
going anywhere, and they believein witches.
(33:03):
Right. We've been, I can't even say
we're surprised by the rhetoric that comes out that literally is
demonizing people and calling people demons and demon
inspired. And you know, it easily could
switch over to that label of just you're a witch, you're a
(33:24):
witch. They, I mean, they were calling
Harris a witch in the campaign. They were calling her a witch.
And we've seen some incidents insome southern towns.
Not that it's just a southern thing.
It's also in the West, I'd have to say, but we've seen in some
southern towns where people willgo out and protest neo paganism
(33:48):
and modern day witchcraft practices and it intimidates
people very easily. So we can still see a lot of
that same kind of persecution that's been around.
Sarah mentioned witch hunts havebeen going on for hundreds,
maybe thousands of years. The other thing is we can.
(34:12):
I mean, Laurie's play is really super factual.
It's. Packed.
Full of nutrients, but it's really entertaining because as
everybody knows, people don't remember what you say.
They remember how you make them feel.
And that's the beautiful thing about Laurie's play is it gives
(34:33):
us. There's enough humor in it.
There's a lot of humor in it with these sublime moments of
poetry and lyricism and and songand silliness.
And I have no doubt Jeff's play is even more physical and dancey
than mine was because I was working with untrained
undergraduates and he has this incredible ensemble of the
(34:56):
professionals. But within all of that
entertainment, there's facts served up and people walk away
chewing that information. What do you hope people are
going to get from your show, Jeff?
I mean, my, my, my audience was university kids, so I had a
different goal. But talk to me about that.
(35:19):
I think that most of the people who come, we are hoping to
branch into a new group of folkspotentially here and and most of
our plays have been very kind offemme forward.
And so we're building a community, building an audience
from that, although we're still very small, there are several
(35:40):
kind of shops around Chicago. There's bookstores, occult
bookstores, and there's a lot ofassociations and groups and
Facebook groups and things like that that are in Chicago that
are connected to modern day Pagan practices and witchcraft.
And so we're trying to sort of branch and, and let those folks
(36:03):
know that this play is happening.
I mean, it was a little bit by accident that we're here around
in the Halloween time. So sometimes that we open on the
6th, we open after how November.20.
And we run through the yeah, November 6th by 25, yes.
And we run through the 16th. So it's really just a two
weekend run. But where is it?
(36:26):
It is at the Den Theater on Milwaukee.
Where can we find ticket information?
Well, you can find ticket information at the Den website.
Dentheatre.com. Yeah, the Den theatre.com
really, and we have our own, we have our own little page within
that, but it's that's a long complicated one.
(36:47):
So the Den theatre.com will get you there and just put prick in
the search. So anyway, yes, we are the Den
Theatre from November 6th through the 16th dentheatre.com.
You can get your tickets. And we do have a couple of
people in the cast who are practicing, who are involved in
(37:07):
some Pagan practices and theater.
If you talk about the dehumanization that is going on
right now in the world, in our culture, the the very
intentional dehumanization for to, to gain power, the thing
that we can do to resist that isto rehumanize.
And there is no other better wayto do that as a group than going
(37:33):
to the theater because you know,while you're in that room
together, it's hard for that power structure to touch you.
And it can't be run by AI because if it was AI, it would
not be theater anymore, right? So theater, we have to just keep
making theater and been creatingthings and being together and
collaborating audience and in inlive places, in real life
(37:57):
places. And that act in and of itself is
an act of rehumanization every time we step in and see a play
together and do a play together.So the fact it's just this
delicious sort of double Decker benefit to our own humanization
that we are also trying to rehumanize the memory of these
poor people that were persecuted.
(38:17):
And we're also rehumanizing ourselves by attending theater,
and very lucky that we get to doit.
I'm going to try to come up and see it.
Yay. Nice.
Yeah. I'm just so grateful that you
guys are doing the rehumanization because even
history, our memory itself is under assault right now.
(38:42):
And we have to speak up for these historic victims and put
that flesh back on them and makethem whole humans again and
realize they're not these supposed witches aren't
caricatures or just data in thisdatabase.
They were human beings and they suffered at the hands of
(39:05):
oppressors. So we have to acknowledge that
before we can move forward, I think.
Bringing the play involves bringing these witches or these
people who are accused of being witches and who were executed,
bringing them back into existence, bringing them back
into 3 dimensional reality, which is a tricky business and
(39:27):
it's fraught with ethical issues.
And the people, the characters in the play are faced with these
emotional issues and these ethical issues of like, oh, are
we doing the right thing here? Are we?
And these are the questions thatwe ask as theatre makers all the
time. Is this thing that we're doing
the is it doing harm? Is it doing good?
(39:48):
What are we doing? So we are in this room,
rehearsal room every day, portraying characters who are in
that process of figuring out whether it's right to bring back
these beings so that they can, you know, for the good of
writing the record, for the goodof the monument of memory.
(40:10):
That's the journey of the plays that the women who are conjuring
or bringing these these human beings back to life are on their
journey of Are we? What are we exactly doing?
Are we hurting these people? And but in the end, I think that
everybody realizes that if the message, the memory is the
important thing and the accuracyof who these people are and how
(40:32):
they should be remembered. It's really exciting to see this
play have its own life and reinterpretation and the
aliveness and what I hope is it resonates in a way that feels
relevant to now to the audience that I think that there's many
direct interpretation is of the work and those that can be
(40:52):
deeply personal for individuals.So I just hope that it speaks to
people and. Sparks.
Something I would just like to say thank you for the
opportunity to talk in this way.This is the first time that Jeff
and Amy and I have talked since Amy had her production and
Jeff's been rehearsal. And I don't know if you have
(41:15):
listeners who are also theater practitioners, but if anyone's
interested in this piece, pleasefind me and reach out to me.
One of the things I love about this particular piece and Amy
spoke to it when she said story theater, you can fill things in.
This can be done with a lot of different sizes of casts and
configurations. And I'm still, I still feel like
(41:36):
I'm making discoveries. And when I see Jeff's audience,
seeing Jeff's actors, I'll be learning some more about what
this play means beyond me, beyond what it means to the
observer. And I do hope that it, I do hope
and believe that it will go on beyond what I think it's
possible. So.
(41:59):
I want to speak to the fact that85 people saw it in Wellington,
New Zealand, and three differentdirectors came up to me
afterwards going, where'd you find the play?
They all want to know more aboutit.
They all want to do it because it's an ensemble based cast and
it offers it has this flexibility and fluidity.
But yeah, it's very, it can be done with many sizes of casts
(42:24):
and many, many iterations. It's also just also just really
fun. It's a fun show.
Lori is a fun writer. She's got a great voice.
One of the reasons Jeff and I jumped on it, not just because
we get to work with Lori, but because her writing is so damn
good. And my students, most of whom
(42:45):
are not theatre majors, I don't teach at a Conservatory.
My students are art majors and finance majors and sociology
majors. They quote the show to me still,
just just said it's tricky business.
And all I could hear was them saying pecky business Ryan into
which is tricky business. I don't know, there's just so
(43:08):
many great lines in it that you'll walk away enjoying.
And sublime, silly, funny pops all straight out of Lori's
delicious self. Everyone should have friends as
lovely as my friends, Amy. Thank you, Amy.
(43:32):
Lovely. Yeah.
And I would just say to the theater makers and magicians and
alchemists and witches in the good sense of the word, we're
all of this cut from the same cloth.
We're creating magic in spaces and.
And that magic, and I'll just goback on that harp again, that
(43:52):
magic is humanizing. It isn't dehumanizing.
This is your opportunity. Get your tickets at The Den
theater.com. That's THEAT.
RE. Duck go to Chicago and see the
play. Prick.
Don't miss out, get those tickets today and have a great
(44:15):
today and a beautiful tomorrow.
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