The Moors in Knoxville

Jen Silverman's The Moors is being performed in Knoxville, TN:

The Lab Theatre presents

The Moors

by Jen Silverman

Directed by Casey Sams

Clarence Brown Theatre at the University of Tennessee

18 October-5 November

With  Catherine Blevins, Molly Brennan, Ella Trisler,  Jasmine R. Handy, Jackson Ahern,  Abigail McCarter.

Dear Reader, 

It is unlikely that the events which you are about to witness have ever happened in real life. Maids do not often switch personalities at the drop of a hat and dogs and moor hens are certainly not known to carry on conversations. This play, however, would not exist without the very real letters of Charlotte Brontë. Our playwright, Jen Sil
verman, spent months reading Charlotte’s passionate letters before coincidentally heading to a week-long writing residency. She could have written about anything, but Charlotte’s words were so strong, so beautiful, so influential that she couldn’t seem to write about anything else. The play you are seeing today is quite different from that first draft, but the traces of Charlotte and her family are still undeniably woven into the fabric of the play. You might notice throughout the play some of the characters have a need to be famous, heard, independent, or simply known and loved. Each of these desires present themselves time and time again in Charlotte’s letters, many of which we still have today thanks to Ellen Nussey, Charlotte’s closest companion, whom history has deemed a “close friend”. There is no way to determine what exactly Charlotte Brontë’s life was like. Who’s to say she did not have a philosophic talking mastiff? Thankfully, this play is not about historical accuracy. Instead, reader, allow yourself to be immersed in a genre-bending combination of absurdity and gothic literature, and please, listen to our characters - they do so love to be heard. (Emily Pope).