Keith Burridge

“Margaret Sanger Speaks” is a one-woman play in which Margaret Sanger, the pioneer of birth control, reminisces to an audience on the origins of Planned Parenthood and her battle for women’s reproductive rights in the first half of the Twentieth Century. She recalls how her advocacy for access to birth control and her opening of the first US birth control clinic got her arrested and imprisoned. During her monologue, she assumes the roles of several of the characters who were pivotal at different times in her life. The play is set in 1955, just as the first birth control pill was about to go into clinical trials. At the end of the play, she confronts her own controversial association with the eugenics movement.

In 1961 two papers were published back to back in Nature describing the discovery of messenger RNA (mRNA), the molecule that transfers information stored in the sequence of DNA to the sequence of amino acids in proteins. The first paper was from Sydney Brenner, Francois Jacob and Matt Meselson. Their key experiment was performed at Caltech. The second paper was from Jim Watson’s group at Harvard. “The Message” is about the rivalry and competition between these two groups as seen through the memories of two fictional participants who reminisce about the race to discover mRNA at a dinner party more than a half century later. Old tensions, rivalries and jealousies bubble up to the surface as they recall past events. Adding to the tension, the former student and lover of one ended up marrying the other. Her research career was sacrificed to have a family. Many of their memories focus on times spent at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory on Long Island, NY, where they and many of the key individuals in the discovery of mRNA first met and where subsequent discoveries on mRNA were made.

Except for the three protagonists, Alan, Ann and George, all the individuals named in the play are real.

In 1919, President Woodrow Wilson suffered a massive stroke that left him paralyzed on one side of his body and unable to speak for several weeks. His wife, Edith, together with his doctor, concealed the state of the President’s health from the public and even from his cabinet. During this period Edith Wilson made executive decisions as if they were being made by the President.

This one woman play is set 40 years after Woodrow and Edith left the White House. Woodrow is long dead but Edith is preparing to attend the inauguration of President Kennedy. She reminisces about her time in the White House. The play starts with how she met Woodrow Wilson, whose first wife had just died as World War 1 is breaking out in Europe. Edith recalls how Woodrow proposed to her just two months after they had met, their romance, wedding and then the US entry into World War 1. She remembers their travel to Europe for the Versailles Peace Treaty, during which period they visit King George V in England. Returning to the US, Wilson battles with a hostile Senate for ratification of the League of Nations. During this fight, he has his stroke and Edith assumes the reins of power. Acting supposedly for Woodrow, she vetoes the Bill introducing Prohibition and approves the rounding up and deportation of immigrants who are accused of being Bolsheviks. The play ends with her hopes for the Kennedys – that they don’t suffer what she and Woodrow have gone through and that Jackie does not have to watch her husband laid low by a stroke.

“The Art of Deception” is based on the story of Han van Meegeren (1889 – 1947), one of the most successful art forgers of the 20th century. He forged Vermeer, Frans Hals, and other Dutch Masters. The play opens in a hospital in Amsterdam on Dec 29th, 1947, the last day of his life. He has been hospitalized because of a heart attack just before he is due to go to prison. His forgery has been uncovered because one of his Vermeers has been found by the Allies in Hermann Goering’s collection of stolen art. He was accused of selling a Dutch treasure to Goering (Hitler’s second-in-command), which was considered treason and punishable by death. He faces the dilemma of whether to reveal the painting as a forgery thereby saving his neck but causing his painting to be destroyed (the fate of forgeries according to Dutch law) and unraveling his life’s work. The play flashes back to his struggle as a young artist. Ridiculed by the critics for his traditional style, his revenge is to paint a Vermeer hailed by the experts as Vermeer’s greatest work. Early in his career he seduces the wife of a prominent critic. She becomes his muse and co-conspirator, encouraging his move into forgery.