Thrive, Or What You Will [an epic]

Okay so this is a story about a gender-nonconforming 18th-century herb woman who’s trying to carve out a larger sense of space… and ends up on a journey around the world. Her name was Jeanne Baret, and nearly everything we know about her life comes from the journals of the men who knew her. An epic tale of historical fiction about our country's present moment, THRIVE blends the style and language of our...
Okay so this is a story about a gender-nonconforming 18th-century herb woman who’s trying to carve out a larger sense of space… and ends up on a journey around the world. Her name was Jeanne Baret, and nearly everything we know about her life comes from the journals of the men who knew her. An epic tale of historical fiction about our country's present moment, THRIVE blends the style and language of our past and present in order to interrogate the nature of "discovery" and its legacy, of (mis)categorizing the world, of species & survival, of power & access, of gender & identity, and of the subjective nature of both history & self. Funny, gripping, poignant, and wild, THRIVE wrestles with the loss of Jeanne's perspective and tries to imagine possibilities of what it may have been. And as Jeanne journeys and changes, so too does her casting – in this ensemble-driven quest of self-determination. Meanwhile, we watch Jeanne and her companion Commerson on their adventure – from meeting to parting – across lands & seas & 6,000 plants – in a voyage that is part love story, part Latin taxonomy, part feminist wrestling with historiography, and part surrender into awe itself and the universal need to flourish.
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Thrive, Or What You Will [an epic]

Recommended by

  • Steven Christopher McKnight:
    17 Oct. 2023
    The play is somewhat of a Herculean task, as epics tend to be. It's a play that almost requires you to develop a relationship with it to fully understand and take in. As such a play that plays with time, space, gender, and personification, every audience member gets something different out of it. I saw this play a couple times at Binghamton University, which worked to its benefit. Having a whole department digest this play over the course of a semester made it such a remarkable shared experience. Recommended especially for universities.
  • Pauline David-Sax:
    30 Jun. 2022
    As someone who read The Discovery of Jeanne Baret by Glynis Ridley, I was thrilled to see how L brought this source material to life. I loved the inventive use of the ensemble of Askers and the multiple Jean/nes. L covers a lot of historical ground while also creating a piece that speaks very much to contemporary audiences. It's a gripping exploration of identity and historiography and sexual politics.
  • Jerry Polner:
    5 Feb. 2022
    L M Feldman's Thrive, or What You Will is indeed an epic, a worldly, sweeping story about the 18th century French herb woman Jeanne Baret, who pretends to be a man in order to board an exploratory ship bound for the "Great Southern Continent." This is a brilliantly told, steel-edged tale about what the worst of men can do and what the rest of us fail to do about it.

Development History

Production History

  • University
    ,
    Binghamton University
    ,
    2023
  • University
    ,
    George Mason University
    ,
    2023
  • Professional
    ,
    American Shakespeare Center
    ,
    2022

Awards

Finalist
,
Best LGBTQ Drama
,
Lambda Literary Awards
,
2022
Winner
,
Shakespeare's New Contemporaries
,
American Shakespeare Center
,
2020
Honorable Mention
,
The Kilroys List
,
2019
Finalist
,
O'Neill National Playwrights Conference
,
2018
Semi-Finalist
,
Bay Area Playwrights Festival
Semi-Finalist
,
The Ground Floor
,
Berkeley Rep