WINNER, 2020 Quarantine Playwriting Competition, Grand Theatre, Cartersville, Georgia
Published by Next Stage Press

FULL-LENGTH. "And Lightning Struck: Mary Shelley and the Curse of Creation" is an atmospheric historical drama that delves into the intimate life of Mary Shelley, the writer of "Frankenstein." It is a story about Mary herself—not an adaptation of "Frankenstein," but rather the story of how this literary genius came to write it. Mary Godwin Shelley was only eighteen years old when she first “gave birth” to her classic story and the creature at the heart of it. Along with her husband, the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, and their friends, including Lord Byron, Mary was part of group of freethinkers who lived life by their own rules, often provoking scandal. But tragedy dogged Mary Shelley’s life—her mother died when she was born, all but one of her children died as children, and by age twenty-five she was already a widow.

"And Lightning Struck" begins in 1831 as a publisher asks Mary to write a new introduction to a new edition of "Frankenstein." As she reluctantly tells him the fascinating story of how she came to create this classic tale during a ghost storytelling contest, she tries to puzzle out the source of her own genius. As the action unfolds, the play re-imagines this incredible true story as the older Mary looks back on her life and is visited by the ghosts of memory—including her husband, her father William Godwin, her stepsister Claire Clairmont, Lord Byron, the doctor–poet John Polidori, and, of course, the fictional Victor Frankenstein and the "creature" he/she created.