Tag Archives: victoriana

by

The challenges of plotting Mrs. Hawking part 4

No comments yet

Categories: development, gilded cages, Tags: , ,

Bernie and I have begun work on Mrs. Hawking part four, tentatively titled Gilded Cages, and we’re running into some challenges. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised, as we’ve had this happen with each subsequent installment, but this one has presented some difficulties that are thus far unique.

img_1228

The biggest thing to deal with is the fact that we’re writing a colonial story. Part four is going to be split into a present day case in 1885, and a flashback story to Mrs. Hawking’s youth in the colonies. We haven’t decided WHICH colony, though, as we are still doing research to figure out if there are any historical features that would serve our turn. What I’d really like to display is that some terrible event that happened during Victoria’s childhood demonstrated to her how corrupt and broken the system is, which helped to shape her worldview in the present. A natural possibility is witnessing something of the horrors of Victorian colonialism. But I really don’t want to just turn the suffering of the local people to be just a lesson for my white hero, or make her into a white savior for those same. And I definitely don’t want to sidestep the issue and just end up tell a story set in a colony that’s only about the white invaders.

What I’ve got here is a Problem of the Protagonist, to use my own theory– when the need to centralize a particular character ends up objectifying or dehumanizing other characters. Because my hero is white, it runs the risk of turning any characters I include of the local people into objects who exist only to facilitate my protagonist’s story. And I definitely do not want to do that with characters of color.

I’m going to put in the work on this. I’ve got a lot of researching and developing to do yet. But I do know a good way to keep a character human is to give them their own arc, demonstrating that their story is one worth following, and affording them agency in the story, making them take actions in the service of achieving their goals and needs. So, while I’m by no means certain yet, my current idea I’m exploring involves having a local character whose personal mission is the central arc of the flashback’s story. This character, who’d probably be female, could have the protagonistic qualities of wanting something, taking actions to pursue it, and driving the plot with their efforts. Perhaps if she drives the story, and other characters are in the position of being reactive to that, I can avoid making any such person being subservient to Victoria’s development.

I’m not sure yet. I’ll have to do more work. But I’m resolved to figure out how to do this in a respectful, conscientious way.

Vivat Regina and Base Instruments by Phoebe Roberts will be performed January 13th-15th at the Boston Westin Waterfront Hotel as part of Arisia 2017.

by

Baby got bustle

No comments yet

Categories: performance, Tags: , , ,

Oh. My. God. Vicky, look at her bustle.

Mrs. Hawking goes up this Saturday, and we’re in tech week! That means making sure all the technical elements are finalized. Part of the fun of our Victorian setting is getting to dress our actors in the eye-catching styles of the period. Our costumer Jennifer Giorno is very concerned with capturing the authentic look for this time and place. Because of this, you may have noticed that our ladies have got an awful lot of junk in the trunk. Because Jenn, you see, likes big bustles.

image

She likes big bustles and she cannot lie.
You Victorians can’t deny
That when a lady walks in with a corseted waist
And a bustle made of lace
You get sprung!

Many fashion trends are in some way about exaggerating some physical characteristic of the form. In Victorian times, they pushed out the feminine hourglass, by cinching the waist in with corsets and building out the hips and rear. This latter effect was achieved by means of the bustle, a structural undergarment that sat just below the waist to add fullness to the back of the skirt and keep it from dragging on the ground.

image

They could be formed a number of ways, by gathered layers of fabric, special cages one tied onto oneself, or with the use of padding. By the 1880s, bustles had grown to enormous proportions, even to the point where it was a common cultural joke to make fun of them, such as George Bernard Shaw does in Arms and the Man.

Want to pull up tough
‘Cause you notice that skirt was stuffed
Dig that pad and cage she’s wearing
I’m hooked and I can’t stop staring
Baby, I ain’t into that narrow type
Want to take your daguerreotype.

Unfortunately this time around we don’t have access to those gorgeous Pendragon gowns, so we have to figure things out for ourselves. Jenn made the volume in the skirt that Circe Rowan will be wearing as Mary in the ballroom scene by a combination of padding and piling up the lace overlay in the back. The bustle attached to the corset then falls over that, making it even fuller.

image

Even Mrs. Hawking, who does not care one whit about fashion, finds herself obligated to wear one because it was so ubiquitous then that it would attract attention if she didn’t. I also like how the huge, unweidy frippery of the bustled skirt contrasts with her sleek, small, lean silhouette in her stealth suit.

So, as the poets say, fuck them skinny bitches in the ballroom– our hustle don’t want none unless you got bustle, hon!

Mrs. Hawking and Vivat Regina will be performed on May 7th at 119 School Street, Waltham, MA at 2PM and 6PM as part of the Watch City Steampunk Festival 2016 in Waltham, MA.

by

Rehearsing “Like a Loss” for staged reading with Bare Bones

No comments yet

Categories: character, gilded cages, performance, Tags: , , , ,

This Sunday we had rehearsal for the staged reading of the ten-minute play Like a Loss at Bare Bones 16: At War. As I’ve mentioned, Like a Loss is unique in that it’s the only time up to this point in the story that the Colonel Reginald Prescott Hawking ever actually appears onstage. I like the opportunity this gives for the audience to fill in certain blanks, to compare what they observe of the man themselves to the disparate viewpoints taken of him by other characters.

image

This piece stars the Colonel as well his longtime personal valet Henry Chapman, who in having served him for so many years through so many adventures has become his good friend. What makes the piece interesting is that it depicts a rare moment of emotional exploration between two gentlemen who do not often discuss such things under any context. They are Victorian gentlemen, of a culture that keeps these things to themselves. They are master and servant, and while closer than many, there is a level of formality and distance that makes such things off-limits. And finally, the Colonel is in the very delicate position of having pretty much every single person he’s close to in a total state of confusion as to why he married such a difficult, disagreeable woman. His family hates her, and Chapman thinks she’s unforgivably cruel to him; none of them see in her what the Colonel sees. Even among all the other factors, that in particular makes it so the Colonel has no one safe to talk to about what he’s currently struggling with. But Chapman cares about his master a great deal, and is taking this opportunity to try and address the pain that the Colonel is so clearly in.

This was a great opportunity for me as a writer, as it demanded effective use of subtext, which is always hard for me. It also presents a particular challenge to our actors, Brad Smith as the Colonel and Eboracum Richter-Dahl as Henry Chapman, his faithful batman and valet. They must convey to the audience just the depth and significance of the emotional moments while maintaining that superficial even keel. It was fascinating to watch them manage those moments, to bring levels that required a huge amount of nuance to read through their guarded, civil attitudes. Like Nathaniel, I always pictured the Colonel to maintain that particular variety of never-say-die British cheer, which is strongly at odds with the difficulty he’s going through in this piece– and Chapman is seeing right through it while politely pretending he isn’t. Brad and Eboracum did a beautiful job illustrating what is actually an extremely tragic story, that of a man who loved of a woman who utterly lacked the capacity to love him back, and of how completely without meaning to they ended up ruining each other’s lives.

The moment depicted in this particular piece alludes to lots of story we’ve yet to see. One thing we do know for sure is that the marriage of Colonel and Mrs. Hawking was extremely fraught. But there’s a great deal of lead-up before it reaches the state it was in when the Colonel died, one year before “Mrs. Hawking” opens. This piece hits at some of those stages it passed through, how they may not always have been as completely at odds as they ended up, how their conflict evolved from friendly opposition to directionless anger and ultimately to the chilly distance that was the final straw in breaking Reginald’s heart.

Someday we’ll tell that whole story. In fact, I’d like to detail the journey of how Victoria and Reginald met and married in what I’m planning to be the fourth full-length installment, after the upcoming Base Instruments. But for now, we only get a glimpse at another point in that timeline, here right after a major downward turn, in the the tragedy of the man who had the terrible misfortune to fall in love with our distant, damaged hero.

Come join us for our one-night only performance as the opener of Bare Bones 16: At War for piece, The Wheel, written by Zinnie Harris and directed by Jess Viator, on Thursday, March 26th, 2015 at 8pm at Unity Somerville, at 6 William Street, Somerville, MA.

by

Dressing the parts

No comments yet

Categories: mrs. hawking, performance, Tags: , , ,

image

Costuming adds a whole extra dimension to theatrical productions. So much can be communicated about a character by the way they dress; actors tend to feel so much for like the people they are portraying when in costume; and it can add visual fascination to any production. Not to mention when you’re telling a story about badass superheroes in a period caper, they definitely need to look cool. So we are working our hardest to ensure that all our characters have a distinctive, appealing, and period-appropriate look.

image

I have a background in costume design myself, and of course I’ve been thinking about how these characters might dress for ages, but our costumer for this production is Jennifer Giorno, who will also be playing Grace Monroe. Best known for her work in dressing people for live-action roleplay games, where she is known as the Costume Fairy, Jenn’s extensive knowledge of the clothes of the Victorian period make excellent use of everything we find charming about the look of this time and place. I’m really lucky to have her effort and expertise.

image

There’s a lot to take into consideration when choosing an effective costume. The culture of the period we’re trying to make come alive has a lot of influence. Mrs. Hawking is a widow, for example, in a time where mourning was strictly regimented. Because she does not want attention drawn to herself, everything she wears in public, then, must be appropriately modest, and of course black. Mary is a working-class maid in a wealthy middle-class house, so her look must speak to both her station and the respectability such a house would want her to reflect.

image

But there’s more than that, of course; there’s also their personalities to consider. A feature of Mrs. Hawking is that even people who aren’t aware of what she really does notice that she moves like a cat, a compact creature of uncanny grace and strength, so whatever we dress her in must allow the actress Frances Kimpel to project that in her movements. Mary is a tall, strong girl, perhaps a little unfashionably so by the standards of her time, but it gives her a bold physicality that makes you believe she could jump into superheroing. Again, her costume must allow Samantha LeVangie to demonstrate that level of energy and strength. On the other end of things, we know Nathaniel is a very successful, well-thought-of man who is comfortable in his place in life. Making him a sharp dresser who looks good in his clothes goes a long way toward informing of us how he fits into his world.

image

And of course they’ve just got to look cool. There’s nothing quite like the thrill of watching cool people do cool things and look damn cool doing it! So we’re putting extra effort into making certain our heroes are just plain fun to look at it.

image

We’re not revealing all of what they’re going to look like yet. We want to save the full looks for the show. But hopefully this will intrigue you enough until you get the full effect during the performance!

Mrs. Hawking, by Phoebe Roberts, will be performed at Arisia 2015 on Friday, January 16th at 6PM at the Westin Waterfront Boston.

by

The drama of stiff upper lips

No comments yet

Categories: character, mrs. hawking, performance, Tags: , , , , ,

IMG_0863.JPG

One of the things we find so fascinating about Victorians is the behavioral code. Stemming from a morality promulgated by the royal family, people’ conduct was to be mild and polite, conservative and chaste, with a high level of emotional restraint. The fact that the characters involved are not accustomed to talking about their feelings means that there is drama in how they finds ways to relate to each other. There must be great meaning in the wordless actions, the silences, and the things they do manage to say. The blocking must speak volumes, and when they do speak frankly, it’s given that much more weight for how unusual it is.

As for our hero, “She’s so English,” as Elizabeth Hunter commented during the rehearsal process for the staged reading of Vivat Regina. Which is rather ironic, given how much contempt she has for English culture, but she has not been able to completely shrug off its influence. She functions very much by bottling up her feelings. It’s become a survival tactic for her to conceal the extent of her enormous rage. Also, excessive displays of emotion make her uncomfortable; she finds them somewhat unseemly, a sign of a lack of control. But though she believes this is part of what makes her strong, it also makes it difficult for her to trust and connect with the members of her team. There’s a reason she prefers to stay alone. This shows what a struggle it is for her to make a bond with Mary, and Mary’s efforts to break through this reservation make up the most important journey in the play.

Nathaniel is modeled after one breed of Englishman in particular, the cheerful, never-say-die type who believes a sunny disposition is the key to keeping calm and carrying on. This can be seen in the way he deals with Mrs. Hawking when she’s been especially difficult. This is an important note for Jonathan’s acting when he portrays Nathaniel in our production. It shows how hard he’s trying to pretend like everything is normal with his aunt to convince Mary to sign on. And it’s important to establish this behavior for him early, so that when he can no longer maintain the positive front, it makes a very clear point at just how thrown and at a loss he is.

Like most abusers, our antagonist Cedric Brockton co-opts existing cultural structures to serve his own ends. He makes use of the fact that his victims are conditioned to behave politely, place a lot of stock in public opinion, and despise themselves for the ways they do not meet proscribed social standards. It makes them susceptible to meeting his demands as a blackmailer. It is, of course, not a uniquely English thing to care about reputation, but the narrow standards of Victorian behavior gives him a lot of material to make use of. This affects the acting of portrayer Francis Hauert in how he must insinuate the crossing of boundaries, but so subtly that victims of it fall back on their polite habits in the absence of any other idea of how to react.

The major exception to this is Mary. She begins the play as an example typical of her sort; a maidservant in the presence of her betters is supposed to make herself as quiet and unobtrusive as possible. But Mary’s great strengths are her passionate moral compass and her drive to form meaningful connections with others. Once she is on her path, she knows their purpose is far bigger than the petty restrictions of arbitrary social rules. When she has to speak, to affirm her beliefs or reach out and connect, there is no stopping her. The intensity of her feelings comes bursting out of her in this play, overwhelming her old conditioning. Her great journey will be to push past the hangups of others and see that they form the team they have to be in order to do their best work.

Mrs. Hawking, by Phoebe Roberts, will be performed at Arisia 2015 on Friday, January 16th at 6PM at the Westin Waterfront Boston.

by

The rehearsal process

No comments yet

Categories: mrs. hawking, performance, Tags: , , , ,

We have just gotten through our first week of rehearsal!

IMG_0841.JPG
Frances Kimpel and Samantha LeVangie, rehearsing as Mrs. Hawking and Mary.

My style as director, as I’ve mentioned, is to have things fairly specifically planned out before I go into rehearsal. A personal artistic value of mine is a dynamic stage, with lots of interesting action happening at the right times. I really dislike when actors just stand there and talk at each other for long periods; it gets boring and makes it easy for the audience to check out. The action must be engaging, this is an action story, but it must always seem purposeful and never gratuitous. But incorporating the right amount of activity is a careful balance.

IMG_0843.JPG
Now with Francis Hauert, Matthew Kamm, and Jonathan Plesser.

Conveying more information about the characters and what’s really going on is also a big responsibility of the action. One thing that’s interesting about telling stories about Victorian characters is that they have certain standards of behavior, as well as social conditioning that they’ve been raised with. Nathaniel is a well-bred, wealthy middle class man, for instance, whereas Mary is a working class domestic servant. The difference in status brought on by their unequal social relationship, their genders, and their personal values has a lot of implications on how they act. For Mary to sit in the presence of her employers, for example, would be a very big deal and might be a serious breach of social etiquette. If I choose to have her sit in a scene, it better be for a meaningful reason, and the message it sends should be clear. They are also famously not a frank-speaking culture, which means there are many things– particularly about their emotions –that they cannot say. That means it’s up to the action to convey what’s going on beneath the genteel facades.

It’s a big challenge, but it’s really exciting to see just how much more of the story I’m able to tell with the visual dimension. And I’m very pleased with my team of actors, who are shouldering the burden of making that real.

IMG_0842.JPGNow with my Coke, also essential to my directing process.

Mrs. Hawking, by Phoebe Roberts, will be performed at Arisia 2015 on Friday, January 16th at 6PM at the Westin Waterfront Boston.

by

The identity of Mrs. Johanna Braun

2 comments

Categories: character, development, influences, vivat regina, Tags: , , ,

Warning: spoilers contained herein for “Vivat Regina”

IMG_0577.JPG

Though there are plenty of clues in Vivat Regina, it’s never explicitly revealed who the client calling herself Mrs. Johanna Braun truly is. I chose to leave it unsaid in the text of that piece, but it may interest those who have read it to know her real name. She is, in fact, a figure from Victorian history— Princess Beatrice, fifth daughter and ninth and final child of the queen to whom the title refers.

The idea to have a princess for a client first occurred to me when I was doing research by watching this excellent BBC documentary called Queen Victoria’s Children. This details the queen’s personality, her relationship with her husband, and the dynamic she established with her nine children. This was highly influential as to the conception of the character of Queen Victoria that I would be assuming for these stories. But the more I learned about Victoria’s daughters, the more it struck me that a princess in disguise would make for a great client of Mrs. Hawking’s.

The royal couple had five daughters— Victoria, Alice, Louisa, Helena, and Beatrice. At first I was leaning towards using Louisa as the client. Louisa was intelligent, outspoken, educated; she was one of the first women to study art at this particular college in London. You might even consider her something of a “pre-feminist,” and she seemed right up Mrs. Hawking’s alley. However, the timeline of Louisa’s life did not really work out. By 1881, she was already married and living in Canada; it wasn’t really feasible for her to even be visiting London.

So I started looking at the other daughters. The older ones were out because they were also married; in fact, they were already queens in Europe. So that meant it had to be either Helena or Beatrice. What made the decision for me was learning how Queen Victoria treated Beatrice after her husband Prince Albert died. She basically made Beatrice, who was only four years old at the time, into her misery bucket, keeping the little girl her constant companion to absorb the full weight of her mother’s enormous grief. That’s a terrible burden to place on such a young child, and the level of emotional abuse that Beatrice endured due to her mother’s overwhelming control and dependency screwed her up pretty seriously. It was noted that she seemed constantly stressed and aged beyond her years, a meek shadow afraid to ever cross her domineering parent. (It’s a detail I included in the stage direction of Vivat Regina.)

So the conception of this client’s role as as a sort of supporter of Mrs. Hawking’s and a person who is using her own personal agency to step outside the system had to be transformed into something that would fit Beatrice’s personality better. Instead she became more of somebody for whom seeking Mrs. Hawking’s support is an enormous marshaling of courage and confidence that she did not normally have. It became an act of quiet rebellion rather than brazen defiance. I found this useful for the moment when she asserts to Mrs. Hawking that everyone has to find their own way to survive in a harsh world, and our hero’s ways cannot necessarily be her ways. I find myself drifting to this conception of Mrs. Hawking’s clients often, however, and I need to make sure in the future they do not all default to this pattern.

One thing that may have thrown people, by design on my part, is the character’s having a slight German accent. Besides the opportunity it gave me to parallel the opening of “A Scandal in Bohemia,” that is actually historical for the family. We tend to picture English royalty with crisp RP accents, but Victoria was a scion of the House of Hanover, and her upbringing, as well as the language spoken in her home, was extremely German-influenced. On top of that, her husband Prince Albert was from the province of Saxe-Coburg. This of course influenced the children, and while they grew out of it the more exposure they had to the outside world, it was noted how in old age when the royal siblings were reunited, they reverted to the very German accents of their childhood. I thought this slightly obscure bit of history made for a neat way to simultaneously hint at and hide who she was.

In the original draft, I left her identity significantly more ambiguous. Basically without at least a slight grasp of Victorian history, it was pretty opaque. Lately I’ve developed a taste for drama that has a lighter touch, that operates on a more subtle level, so I thought it would be better to never make it clear. But it was suggested to me by early readers that the possibility of figuring out would be more satisfying for the audience, so I gave her that exchange with Mrs. Hawking with “That’s the system your mother has made for us,” and “When majesties and potentates bow before her, how is one such as I to defy her?” That pretty well gives it away. Most people were able to grasp that she was a princess, even if they couldn’t name her as Beatrice.

I’ve painted a pretty tragic picture of her in the story, but it may interest you to know that she turns out okay. While the queen never really let her leave her side, she did eventually meet a man she loved, a minor prince called Henry of Battenburg. They will get married in 1885, and they will live a happy life together. So if “Mrs. Braun” ever encounters our heroes again— and who knows? —she will be a woman in a better place than she was that night she came seeking justice in 1881.

by

“The Cuff” – scribblings on the end of Mrs. Hawking’s mourning period

No comments yet

Categories: base instruments, development, scenes, Tags: , , , , ,

IMG_0694.JPG

So I’ve been working to figure out the Mrs. Hawking timeline to nail down when each story needs to happen. The main things to work around are that the first story takes place in 1880, to happen in proper proximity to the Indian Rebellion and the Battle of Kandahar, and I want the sixth story to have Mrs. Hawking taking on Jack the Ripper, which would happen in 1888. Six pieces need to be spread across that span, with an amount of time between them that is believable. I’ve decided that it makes more sense to place Base Instruments in 1883 rather than 1882, which is what I had originally been using for all other pieces of it written for this 31P31D, so that the second trilogy can be in 1885, 1886, and 1888, making no gap longer than two years.

If it’s happening in 1883, then, it occurred to me that means that Mrs. Hawking will be almost out of mourning for her late husband the Colonel. Mourning for widows was very regimented in Victorian England, so even if it didn’t match her own feelings or preferences, she would have to observe the etiquette so as not to attract unwanted attention and criticism. I don’t know if this is an especially useful scene to include in Base Instruments, but it’s an interesting thing to address.

The Cuff
by Phoebe Roberts

VICTORIA HAWKING, lady’s society avenger
MARY STONE, her housemaid and assistant

London, England, 1883
~~~

(MRS. HAWKING dresses to go out in public. She regards herself in the mirror. MARY neatens the vanity table.)

MRS. HAWKING: Two months now.

MARY: Two months of what?

MRS. HAWKING: Two months until I’m out of mourning.

MARY: Oh, my. I’d quite forgotten.

(She goes to the wardrobe and begins looking through the dresses.)

MARY: I haven’t looked at your old things since I came. I think it should all still fit.

MRS. HAWKING: I don’t much care.

MARY: Well, I should think it would be easier than having to shop.

MRS. HAWKING: I’ve no wish to return to colors. It isn’t as if I can dress how I like anyhow.

MARY: Well. If you kept to blacks, no one would think anything of it.

MRS. HAWKING: Mm.

(She holds up her right hand to look at her wedding ring.)

MRS. HAWKING: I wouldn’t mind dispensing with this, though.

MARY: Oh. I’m… not sure that’s done.

MRS. HAWKING: No. It is not. If you’re shackled to a man, you’re at least rid of him when he dies. But you remain in the cuff until you replace it with some living fellow’s.

(Pause.)

MRS. HAWKING: I had thought to bury the Colonel with his. But Nathaniel saved it, and gave it to me. He thought at the time I might like to have it.

MARY: Did you keep it?

MRS. HAWKING: It’s in a snuffbox in his dressing room. What else could I do? Like this, certain parties would object to anything less.

MARY: It’s a small thing, at least.

MRS. HAWKING: It keeps me beneath notice.

(MARY comes close to look at MRS. HAWKING’s ring.)

MARY: It’s beautiful.

MRS. HAWKING: India ruby. He was so proud.

8/21/14

by

The two Victorias

No comments yet

Categories: character, influences, vivat regina, Tags: , ,

image

In choosing to name my hero Victoria in this setting, I cannot help but invite comparison to the most famous Victoria in history, the queen who gave her name to the period. Indeed, I briefly considered titling the second story “Victoria Regina” instead of the more generic “Vivat Regina,” to hammer the parallel home. The first explicit reference I make to this comparison is the conversation in act 1 scene 5 of Vivat Regina. Mary makes the assumption I imagine that many people would make, that Mrs. Hawking would approve of a willful, prominent female leader who wielded so much personal authority. But the queen, despite her own place, was not a supporter of women in public positions, and in fact found the growing feminist movement to be godless and unseemly. She promulgated a social order and a standard of morality that reinforced many of the structures Mrs. Hawking is struggling to tear down, which gives our hero a particular resentment for having been her namesake.

My thinking on her is very influenced by an excellent documentary called Queen Victoria’s Children, which also gave me the idea for who might bring the problem in Vivat Regina. The documentary characterizes the queen as a strong, imperious personality, but also thrown by whims and rages and compelled to regard everything around her as a prop to her own existence. I plan to use this image of her if I ever actually depict her onstage in the story. At the moment I have no plans, but I have established that she and Mrs. Hawking have encountered one another in the past. I’m sure they owe each other favors, in fact, or at least have each other in some sort of Mexican standoff. I’ve not exactly decided what their history is, but I am certain it resulted in an uneasy coexistence where they do not work together, but occasionally find they must work around each other. I’ll have to figure out exactly how that works if I ever write them actually sharing a scene together.

by

Mr. Ambrose Hawking

2 comments

Categories: character, scenes, themes, Tags: , , , , , ,

20140510-213919.jpg

Though I’ve written very little in his voice, I’ve thought a great deal about the patriarch of the respectable, successful middle-class Hawking family, and the father of Justin and Nathaniel. While his younger brother Colonel Reginald Hawking served in the military, Ambrose built the family business from the ground up, turning a series of small investments into a thriving venture capital firm with interests all across the empire. He was close to and very proud of his brave younger brother, with Reginald’s choice to marry the fiery, inscrutable Victoria Stanton being the only difference to ever come between them. This conflict is referenced in Like a Loss, a ten-minute play featuring the Colonel and his valet.

Ambrose is a bastion of traditional Victorian masculinity, accustomed to authority and privilege and very skeptical of the notion of women having agency. The world and its accompanying systems have done well for him, and so he is loath to see them change. His younger son Nathaniel, however, is beginning to question and even reject the assumptions to which his father raised him. It will come as quite a shock when he is confronted by Nathaniel’s new perspective on things, especially when it comes to affect the way Nathaniel decides to raise his own son.

I don’t know if or when Ambrose will ever actually appear in the plays. Even in the upcoming third one, in which I plan for other members of Nathaniel’s family to appear and drive the conflict, I don’t know if there will be room for him. Still, I think the influence of a traditionally Victorian patriarchal father is important for Nathaniel’s sorting out of how he’s going to engage with feminism. If nothing else, I’m sure he will be mentioned, as he is in Like a Loss, or perhaps show up in another in-universe short piece.

Here is a small chunk I felt compelled to write, just as a way of exploring the slightly more human side of him. One thing is clear, he cared very deeply about his brother the Colonel, and what pained Reginald was also pain to him. I also think it serves to make his strong antipathy towards Victoria a lot more understandable. So, in service of that, here is a conversation I could picture them having about the Colonel.

~~~

NATHANIEL: Did you think he ever knew just how… strongly she felt?

AMBROSE: Are you joking? Of course he did. He wasn’t a fool.

NATHANIEL: How do you know?

AMBROSE: Everyone knew. You could read it in her every glance, she never tried to hide it. And it cut him.

NATHANIEL: Did he tell you?

AMBROSE: He didn’t have to. I was his brother, I could see it in his eyes.

NATHANIEL: You never told me.

AMBROSE: By Jove, Nathaniel, do you fancy I hate her just because she’s unpleasant at dinner parties? The woman my brother loved despised him above all else. And he had to live with that. You may have found a way to forgive her, boy, but I never shall.

1 2