ON HER SHOULDERS Virtual Presentations
available on NPTC YouTube Channel (NewPerspectivesTC)

Saturday, February 27, 2:00pm EST (U.S.)
GABRIEL (1839) by George Sand (France)
new translation by Lynn Marie Macy
directed by Lynn Marie Macy, dramaturgy by Melody Brooks

The handsome, heroic heir to a vast estate, raised as a man to follow a man’s pursuits and to despise women, is devastated to learn at the age of seventeen that he is in fact a she. Gabriel courageously refuses to give up her male privileges, and her tragic struggle to work and fight and love in all the ways she knows how offers a window into the obstacles faced by George Sand, the prolific intellectual woman whom the popular press portrayed as a promiscuous, cigar-smoking oddity in trousers. “Strange that the most virile talent of our time should be a woman’s!” exclaimed a reviewer in 1838.

ON HER SHOULDERS was founded in May 2013 to present rehearsed, staged readings of plays by women from across the spectrum of time, with contemporary dramaturgs contextualizing them for modern audiences. To date, the program has presented 58 plays by 45 writers, from the years ca 955 to 1970. The Play in Context, the dramaturgical and scholarly presentation component for all of the readings, is sponsored in part by the League of Professional Theatre Women.