Teen theater troupe devises play about 19th century practice of putting ‘difficult’ women in asylums - The Dallas Morning News

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“I don’t think any woman in America is better qualified than I to supply the material for a good sermon on insane asylums — for I was locked up in one for 28 years,” Adriana P. Brinckle wrote in an 1887 journal article.

Mara Richards Bim, founder of Dallas’ Cry Havoc Theater Company, came across Brinckle’s story in a collection of similarly harrowing tales while browsing the Strand bookstore in Manhattan. Now, 20 years later, with the help of her young cast, she has used the book as inspiration for Cry Havoc’s latest production, Committed: Mad Women of the Asylum.

During the Victorian era and well into the 20th century, it was not uncommon for so-called difficult women to be sent by their husbands, fathers or doctors to mental hospitals, where they were subjected to violent treatments that would be considered torture today.

Will McDonald as Paul Smith (left) and Damian Charles as Dr. Wells manhandle Zonika Gamble-Davis as Mary Phillips during a rehearsal. The costumes were designed by Ryan Matthieu Smith.(Ben Torres / Special Contributor)

Committed focuses on the late 19th century. Early feminism had begun to open up new possibilities for women even as resistance to their independent thinking and behavior persisted. “It was the period we could relate to best and it had a variety of interesting stories,” Richards Bim says in an interview during rehearsals at a Kessler Park church.

Rather than adapting the first-person narratives she discovered in the book Women of the Asylum: Voices from Behind the Walls, 1840-1945, which would be typical for Cry Havoc, she decided the teenage performers would create their own fictional characters and devise a script through long improvisations.

Damian Charles as Dr. Wells dances with Ava McKay as Cassandra Lewis in a scene from "Committed: Mad Women of the Asylum," a new play devised by Cry Havoc Theater Company during long improvisations. Costumes by Ryan Matthieu Smith.(Ben Torres / Special Contributor)

Richards Bim started Cry Havoc in 2014 to bring younger voices to the stage, building a company around high school students who wanted to take on contemporary social issues by doing their own research.

In past shows like Crossing the Line (about border issues), Babel (gun rights and violence,) and Shots Fired (the 2016 Dallas police shootings), company members conducted exhaustive interviews and then shaped the scripts using verbatim quotes from their sources. Their painstaking process making Babel even became the subject of the 5-episode podcast Gun Play from KERA arts reporters Hady Mawajdeh and Jerome Weeks.

But still, Richards Bim thought, “We had gotten into a formulaic way of doing things. It was time to try something different.”

Cry Havoc Theater Company founder Mara Richards Bim talks to the teen cast at a rehearsal. (Ben Torres / Special Contributor)

The script was devised by her, associate director Emily Ernst, acting coach Lisa Cotie and members of the cast who play the committed characters. There are also servants, a nurse and three male actors portraying the overbearing men. Richards Bim directs the show. The period costumes were designed by Ryan Matthieu Smith.

Maya Reddy as Geraldine Packard prays during a scene from Cry Havoc Theater Company's "Committed: Mad Women of the Asylum." “I had an idea that asylums were a thing but not how easy it was for a man to commit a woman, how little a woman could speak out about what they were going through and how much they had to obey with this threat that hung over them,” the 17-year-old high school senior says in an interview.(Ben Torres / Special Contributor)

“I had an idea that asylums were a thing but not how easy it was for a man to commit a woman, how little a woman could speak out about what they were going through and how much they had to obey with this threat that hung over them,” says Maya Reddy, a 17-year-old senior at Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts who plays Geraldine Packard, a lesbian who puts herself in an asylum because she believes her sexual orientation is an illness and a sin.

“When we started staging improvs of being in the asylum, living it was eye-opening as to how they were treated. They would dunk a woman in cold water and leave her there, not letting her dry off, or wrap her in wet bandages. They would pour hot water up their nether regions and burn them down there as well. One treatment particularly for lesbians, they would show them a picture of the person they loved and give them medicine that would make them vomit.”

Like the real-life Adriana Brinckle, Geraldine gets stuck in the asylum after the death of her father, who had wanted her to marry a man who could help him financially with his failing business.

“People need to know what it was like back then and draw parallels to what life can still be like for women now,” Reddy says. “Like if you look at Britney Spears’ conservatorship, women are still being put in captivity because of these mental issues that are brought up by men in their lives. This concept of the asylum doesn’t live in the past.”

Zonika Gamble-Davis (left) and Hannah Moore (center) play "difficult" women sent to asylums by the men in their lives in Cry Havoc Theater Company's "Committed: Mad Women of the Asylum." “What the crap is wrong with you guys?" Gamble-Davis asks in an interview. "Please do not do that. But this is how it was. Men, what they say goes." (Ben Torres / Special Contributor)

Zonika Gamble-Davis, a 19-year-old recent graduate of Skyline High School, portrays Mary Phillips, a seamstress who is committed by her husband after she has an affair with her cousin. In the asylum, Mary is haunted by the violin playing of her 11-year-old daughter.

Other characters are sent to the asylum for embracing spiritualism, having an abortion or because their husband wanted to carry on an affair.

Gamble-Davis says she was most surprised by the backward-thinking treatments forced on the women. “What the crap is wrong with you guys? Please do not do that. But this is how it was. Men, what they say goes.”

Though Committed is more of a conventionally structured play than the usual Cry Havoc fare, the company has added new twists. The production is presented in-the-round in an eerie basement space at Southside on Lamar that formerly housed an art gallery.

It’s also Cry Havoc’s first immersive show. In this case, that means that while there are chairs for the audience to sit on, they’re invited to get up and move around the set to catch simultaneous scenes.

The first half of the 90-minute show is built around a series of afternoon teas before the women are committed one-by-one, though time is blurred. The second part focuses on asylum life.

“This is the first show we’ve done where it truly was collaborative over a very long period of time,” Richards Bim says. “I so enjoyed it, working with a group of young women, especially. We brought the guys in and said, ‘Read this.’ The women created it. The process has been nurturing. It’s been salve for my soul.”

Details

July 22-Aug. 1 at Southside on Lamar, 1409 Botham Jean Blvd. $15-$25. cryhavoctheater.org.

Olivia King (far right) and other members of the cast of "Committed: Mad Women of the Asylum" take direction at a rehearsal of the new Cry Havoc Theater Company-devised play. (Ben Torres / Special Contributor)

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