Segal Center Film Festival on Theatre and Performance (FTP) 2022 presents
THE SECURELY CONFERRED, VOUCHSAFED KEEPSAKES OF MAERY S.
by Sibyl Kempson / 7 Daughters of Eve Thtr. & Perf. Co.
Country: United States |Running Time: 59 | Language: English | Year Of Inception: 2021
About THE SECURELY CONFERRED, VOUCHSAFED KEEPSAKES OF MAERY S.
VIEW THE FULL FILM HERE.
Combining literary and dramatic narrative with eye-witness accounts of Sasquatch encounters from the internet, THE SECURELY CONFERRED, VOUCHSAFED KEEPSAKES OF MAERY S. spans several time periods, suggesting as many versions of Frankenstein author Mary Shelley as there are definitions of the word “Gothic.”
The story begins in an imposing collegiate lecture hall, turning shocking exposé. Teenage Mary Wollstonecraft has eloped abroad with Percy Shelley, her half-sister Clarie in tow. As the group (joined briefly by the ‘Poet LB’) travels by foot through mountains and forests of anachronism, a string of misfortunes – financial, maternal, and familial – coinciding with the advent of electricity, causes Maery S. to spawn a monstrous creative expression.
Dormant histories in varied geographies combined with the forceful maelstrom of feminine sexual awakening unleash an aggressive, even violent “Maery S.” who takes over an entire populace. This is the Mary Shelley no one ever talks about, referred to only as “Maery S.” (She adds the extra “e” when she and her sisters are sent to debtor’s prison for stealing toilet paper.)
Researched by witnesses from another time and on a different continent, and stalked by a certain lady philanthropist and collector who also happens to serve as our own unreliable narrator, Maery’s Monster takes on its own life and violent history, as morally-unchecked technology will do … It tears the veil separating aspects of human from animal, failure from achievement, and the feminine from everything else. Maery is revealed as a complex pantheon of creation energies. She awaits us at the crossroads that is the relationship of the female soul to the natural, to the creative, to the technological.
Originally commissioned by Abrons Arts Center and the Chocolate Factory Theater as a stage play for the Abrons Playhouse, and adapted for the screen in collaborative isolation during the great Covid lockdown of 2020-21, with support from the NYU Skirball Center, New Dramatists, the Playwrights Center, the Baryshnikov Arts Center, the Prelude Festival, the New York State Council on the Arts, and the Jerome Foundation, the film features an unholy ‘frankensteining’ of time periods, geographies, and mythologies both ancient and modern. A kaleidoscopic collage of theatrically-infused imagery inspired by early efforts toward the moving pictures, it’s a photo play alchemizing the digital and the analogue into a cut-and-paste thaumaturgy.
Starring Dee Dorcas Beasnael
Co-starring Chris Giarmo & Brian Mendes
With Sibyl Kempson as The Lady Duke
Victor Morales & Crystal Wei
As the Witnesses
Special appearance by:
The Mighty River Rhein
And Oceana James as The Aeneid
Written & Directed by Sibyl Kempson
Music composed by Graham Reynolds
Sound Design, Original Scoring, Musical Direction and Sonic Staging by Chris Giarmo
Produced by Amanda Davis
Additional Direction: Stephanie Anuwe & Brian Mendes
Editing: Alex Albanese / Fun City Films & Sibyl Kempson
Stage Manager: Olivia O’Brien
Illustration and design: Amanda Villalobos
Videography: Sibyl Kempson, Jay Silver, & Eva von Schweinitz
Lighting design: Madeline Best
Additional photography: Stephanie Anuwe, Leonie Bell, Andrew Crider, Alison McNulty, & Ben Williams
Puppet design and construction: Daniel Hurlin
Special scenic effects: Victor Morales
Collage: Leonie Bell & Sibyl Kempson
Featured artwork: Stephanie Morales
Additional illustration: Rebecca Frank
Costumes: Sibyl Kempson
Nightgowns for Ms. Beasnael & Miss Kempson: Erica-Lynn Huberty
Stunt doubles for the River Rhein: the Delaware & Hudson
Audience Plant: Nathan Lemoine
Additional Monster Sounds and Fur: Buddy Blobner
Pre-show chatter: Rosemary Quinn, Amanda Davis & Natalie Smith, Elliott & Frank Cennetoglu, Laryssa, Sharyn & Milo Jackson Husiak, Andreea Mincic & Aaron Treat, Maurina Lioce & Adrienne Truscott.
Shot on location in the Mittelrhein, Germany, Storm King Mountain, NY, Sandy Hook Point, NJ, Montgomery Place at Bard College, and the Delaware Water Gap, PA.
Additional illustration
REBECCA FRANK
Administration
SARAH BYRD WILLIS
Image Credits:
Brandon Davis / Barcroft USA, J.C. Lee, Katarzyna Podermańska, Carlos Enrique Morel, Christophe Ruchschtuhl, Caspar David Friedrich, Phillip Veit, Clinton Campbell, Albrecht Dürer, and others.
The text of this piece contains quotes from the following source materials:
DARKLY: BLACK HISTORY AND AMERICA’S GOTHIC SOUL, by Leila Taylor, Repeater Books, 2019.
A TIME OF GIFTS: On Foot to Constantinople: From the Hook of Holland to the Middle Danube, by Patrick Leigh Fermor, 1977.
GOTHICKA: VAMPIRE HEROES, HUMAN GODS, AND THE NEW SUPERNATURAL, by Victoria Nelson, Harvard University Press, 2013.
MARY SHELLEY, A BIOGRAPHY by Muriel Spark and Allene Stuart Phy, 1987.
Copyright MMXXI by Sibyl Kempson
All rights reserved
Special thanks to Shawn Sides, Carra Martinez, Brent Harring, Deborah Yarchun, Janaki Ranpura, Eleanor Savage, Sarah Saltwick, Jake Jeppson, Jeremy Cohen, Hayley Finn, Cristina Castro, Skyler Nowinski, H. Adam Harris, and Jimi Hendrix.
Thanks to Pearce Bunting, Regina Williams, Dan Hopman and Chase Burns.
Thanks to Dan Rothenberg, thanks to Antje Oegel.
Thanks to Chris Giarmo, Julia Sirna-Frest, Dee Beasnael, Jan Leslie Harding, Eryk Aughenbaugh, Jermaine Golden, Jess Barbagallo, Johnny Gasper, Amelia Workman, Zenzi Williams, Randall Scotting, Robert M. Johanson, Michael Wiener, and Olivia O’Brien.
Thanks to Sahra Motalebi, Amanda Davis, Jay Wegman, Blaze Ferrer, Brian Rogers, Stephen McGroarty, and Craig Peterson.
Thanks to New Dramatists.
Thanks to Jeanine Durning, Tina Satter & Joey Truman, Stacey Peters & Scott Gillette, Lee Berks & Marco.
Thanks to Gail Blobner and Susan & Grover Kempson.
Thanks to Julie Napolin & Ben Williams.
Thanks to Kate Scelsa & Siobhan Glennon.
Thanks to Elevator Repair Service Theater.
Special thanks to Jay Wegman and the NYU Skirball Center, Ellie Wallace, Karinne Keithley Syers, and Caleb Hammons, Laura Hirschberg, Jason Wells, Hannah Gosling-Goldsmith and Drewe Goldstein at the Bard College Fisher Center for the Arts.
Dedicated to the memory of Joanne Jacobson.
About Sibyl Kempson / 7 Daughters of Eve Thtr. & Perf. Co.
Sibyl Kempson began making performances in NYC at the turn of the millennium. She launched the 7 Daughters of Eve Thtr. & Perf. Co. in 2015 at the Martin E. Segal Center at the City University of New York Graduate Center.
Named for Brian Sykes’ genealogical theory on mitochondrial DNA, which posits that we are all descended along matrilineal lines from a very small number of original mothers, 7 Daughters of Eve Thtr. & Perf. Co. unearths and contemplates – in contexts of live performance, ritual, installation and video – places in human and non-human history where science, religion, and feminism intersect.
7 Daughters of Eve has presented works at the Abrons Arts Center, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Kitchen NYC.
Currently we are beginning an exploration to bring the multi-layered narratives of Kempson’s dramatic texts to the worlds of 360º video, digital immersion, and virtual reality. Projects in the works include: MAERY S. Part 2 and an Ibsen adaptation A BEE IN THE HEART OF HER, in collaboration with the English Language Theater in Berlin.
About The Festival
The Segal Center Film Festival on Theatre and Performance (FTP) is an annual event showcasing films drawn from the world of theatre and performance. The festival presents experimental, emerging, and established theatre artists and filmmakers from around the world to audiences and industry professionals. The 7th annual festival will focus on work for the screen created by theatre artists during the Time of Corona. The festival will be held digitally from March 1st – 15th 2022.
Explore projects created under THE SECURELY CONFERRED, VOUCHSAFED KEEPSAKES OF MAERY S. from March 1st to March 15th 2022 on the Segal Center Film Festival on Theatre and Performance (FTP) website.
Support this project by Sibyl Kempson / 7 Daughters of Eve Thtr. & Perf. Co. by making a direct donation to them at the following details: Paypal: skempson@7daughtersofeve.com, Venmo: @Sibyl-Kempson, https://www.patreon.com/user?u=25864006
Read more about Sibyl Kempson / 7 Daughters of Eve Thtr. & Perf. Co. and THE SECURELY CONFERRED, VOUCHSAFED KEEPSAKES OF MAERY S. at (http://www.7daughtersofeve.com) or get in touch at skempson@7daughtersofeve.com / Instagram @7daughters
