SOMETHING’S BREWING… Pipeline Fellow Heads to NYC with Her Play, Witchduck
By Liv Wilson, Pipeline Member
In May, one of our very own Pipeline New Works fellows, Eva DeVirgilis, spent a week in New York City developing her new play, Witchduck. This residency was part one of a three-part series of developmental workshops with director, Lisa Rothe. Cadence is proud to support the creation of new work and Eva’s imaginative hilarious play on the next steps of its journey.
Eva DeVirgilis is a playwright, performer and speaker best known for creating joyfully-defiant, female-forward solo-shows and comedies. Over the last year, she wrote Witchduck as a part of Cadence’s Pipeline New Works Fellowship, under the mentorship of Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award-winning playwright, David Lindsay-Abaire.
Witchduck follows the remarkable story of midwife Grace Sherwood, the last woman to be tried for witchcraft in North America in 1706 in Princess Anne County, what is now known as Virginia Beach, VA. A witty, riotous piece, it astounds and entertains before it makes us question the absurd lengths gone to in order to control women.
Lisa Rothe, director and facilitator of this developmental workshop, is also an intuitive healer dedicated to the long-lived practices of gathering and storytelling. Lisa previously worked with Eva on her one woman show, In My Chair, which premiered as a co-production with VA Repertory and Cadence Theatre.
However, Witchduck is a very different piece, featuring multiple characters played by eight female-identifying actors. While developing new work, Lisa seeks to create a container in which to play; chaos within structure. With the motto: process is the product, she does her own midwifing of new plays through facilitation and collaboration.
This workshop brought together a fantastic group of actors to read the play aloud. Eva then spent several days researching, reading witch-hunting texts written under the legitimacy of the king. At the end of the week, the group came back together and read the new prologue that Eva had crafted spurred by her discoveries.
During the week, the group also participated in several ritualistic activities, inspired by the witchy healing of the play. The women sat in a circle and passed an eagle feather, to signify an opening and closing. They crafted; making bonnets, pilgrim hats, and Puritan puppets to take on various roles in the piece. They read from Witches, Midwives, Nurses. They harnessed the spirit of play which led to the opening of hearts around personal connections to the text and the hardships faced by women across centuries.
This gathering granted permission to be messy, to live in the zip code of “I don’t know”, and to be in a room together with space and time to work and play. Gratitude for this opportunity filled Eva to the brim. She would like to give a special thank you to Anna, Chris, and David for their belief in this play and all new work. And to the Pipeline cohort for providing support from the beginning and encouraging her to not be too precious, and to put out pages before they’re perfect.
So, what’s next, you may ask? Eva will have two more workshops ofWitchduckin the next year, which will support the development of the piece through dramaturgical research and actor engagement. We are so proud of Eva and this terrific new play, written and conceived as a part of the Pipeline New Works fellowship. We know they will both go far.
Photos courtesy of Eva DeVirgilis, Kaitlyn Hennie and Lisa Rothe.
Pictured: Jessica Kadish, Flower Estefana Rios, Elizabeth Morton, Nilaja Sun, Eva DeVirgilis, Lisa Rothe, Mary Bacon. Erica Cruz Hernandez, Becca Ayers, Serenity Mariana, Rina Dutta, and Kaitlyn Hennie.
