Savage Conversations: Theatrical Reading

Theatrical reading of UGA professor Leanne Howe's book Savage Conversations, hosted in coordination with the Department of Theatre & Film Studies, Department of English, and the Creative Writing Program at UGA. The reading will take place on April 15th and 16th, 7 p.m. Balcony Theatre Room 400, Fine Arts Building.  Free and open to the public.

The Players:

Mary Todd Lincoln: Marla Carlson

Savage: Sean Polite

Rope: Kya Missick

Stage Directions: Erin McDermott

The play adaption is taken from Savage Conversations, (2019) LeAnne Howe, UGA faculty, English.  The conversations take place in 1875 between Mary Todd Lincoln and a Savage Indian. Mary has been placed in an insane asylum for “nervous derangement and fever in the head.” Her doctor notes peculiar symptoms. Mrs. Lincoln tells him that a savage spirit is removing wires from her eyes, especially the left one, and cutting the bones from her cheeks. She attributes the fiendish work inside her head to an American Indian. Each night she claims he lifts her scalp and replaces it by dawn, sometimes cutting a bone out of her cheek. The Indian,” she says, “slits my eyelids and sews them open, always removing the wires by dawn’s first light.”