Holy Spirit

From the Trinity to today’s Supreme Court decisions, playwright Emily Mann finds meaty issues for her plays.

By: Anthony Stoeckert
   Where writers get their ideas from is one of life’s great mysteries. For Emily Mann, they can even be found in a crossword puzzle. About two and a half years ago, Ms. Mann needed an idea for a play and sought out some help.
   "So I said to friends, ‘If you hear of a good story, it could be gossip, it could be in the newspaper, it could be something someone has told you, let me know the story because I’m still looking,’" she says. She soon heard from a friend who was stumped by a clue in a Sunday crossword puzzle to which the answer was "Elizabeth Packard." Having no idea who Mrs. Packard was, the friend googled her name.
   It turns out Ms. Packard was an Illinois woman who had been placed in an insane asylum because she disagreed with her husband’s opinions on religion. The Rev. Theophilus Packard was a Calvinist minister who believed his wife’s liberal thinking was a danger to their six children. Illinois law at the time stipulated that a woman could be committed without a hearing based on her husband’s recommendation.
   The friend then told Ms. Mann about Ms. Packard, and the playwright googled the name herself.
   "It was like a Malcolm Gladwell ‘Blink’ moment," Ms. Mann says of reading an online article on Elizabeth Packard. "I knew I had (my next story) and I’ve been working on it ever since." The result is Mrs. Packard, which will run at McCarter Theatre May 4 through June 10. It also will be performed at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., in June.
   Ms. Mann, McCarter’s artistic director, is directing the play. She says she didn’t have any preconceived notions as to what she wanted to write about when she sent out that all points bulletin for ideas, but Ms. Packard’s story offered an opportunity to write about issues that are important to her, particularly women’s rights. The playwright was also intrigued with writing about an historical figure who isn’t well known.
   "I didn’t want to write about a famous person," she said in an interview at her office a few weeks before the new play’s premiere. "I wanted to write about someone forgotten by history or that people don’t know about. That of course gives me more (artistic) license… I’m doing a play inspired by her story. I like that no one knew about her."
   Mrs. Packard is a drama, not a work of history. It contains composite characters and created dialogue, what Ms. Mann calls "artistic hunch." Fitting for a playwright, who’s well-schooled in Shakespeare (who, as Ms. Mann puts it, "didn’t let history get in the way of drama").
   "But I’m also the daughter of an historian," she says. Her father, Arthur Mann, was the biographer of New York Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia. "So I think I’m more inclined to stick as much to the historical record as I possibly can, and I have. I’ve only changed or compressed, or excised, certain amounts of things because it’s a play and real life rarely follows perfect dramaturgical structure."
   Many of the facts of Mrs. Packard’s life seem made for drama. She was an educated woman, encouraged by her father. In the play, she debates that the Holy Ghost of the Holy Trinity is feminine because the Trinity would only make sense if the Son was the product of a love between the Father and a female Holy Ghost. Furthermore, she tells Dr. McFarland that the Aramaic noun for Holy Spirit is female and that Jesus spoke Aramaic. Her husband cites these beliefs as evidence that Mrs. Packard sees herself as the personification of the Holy Ghost.
   That such an educated woman would give up her individuality in marriage without realizing it (and later be committed as a result) is ready-made irony.
   Ms. Packard also makes for a pretty complex character. Some of her beliefs, particularly on voting, aren’t exactly up to 21st century standards. Early in the play, she talks about how getting committed has made her rethink a few things, including women fighting for voting rights (implying she thought those women’s views were extreme).
   "Before she was put into the asylum, she thought it was proper (that there be) one-family, one-vote, and that the husband made that decision, and the woman had her separate sphere," Ms. Mann says. "She bought all of that."
   Neither was she unhappy with her role in life. The character in the play talks proudly of her children and it’s apparent that the worse part of her ordeal is the possibility of her not being able to raise them.
   "She thought there was the woman’s role and there was the man’s role," Ms. Mann says. "She was very much a creature of her time. And what she wanted to be was the wife of a beloved minister, like her mother, and have lots of children, and be a happy wife and mother, that was her goal."
   Another important character is Dr. McFarland, who cares for Mrs. Packard in the asylum. While he professes dedication to her, a fellow inmate warns her that the doctor isn’t all he appears to be. Complicating matters is the obvious attraction the doctor and patient feel for each other.
   "They have a very complex relationship. I don’t know if I invented it, maybe I did, but I only got (a few) little clues from the written record… and I went from there," Ms. Mann says. "And that very much became the motor of the play. So that’s very much an act of the imagination, but I think in essence it has great truth."
   Writing about Ms. Packard’s story also allowed Ms. Mann to comment on events in today’s world, including Abu Ghraib.
   "(We) saw possibly good and moral young people, who were put in a position of absolute power with very few strict rules, behave in ways we think of as less than human, and in reality it’s all too human," she says of those events and how they relate to her play. "And we see that over and over again, that absolute power corrupts absolutely. And so we see that strain in the play as well, these women are treated like animals."
   Also important to Ms. Mann are the threats to women’s rights she sees in the face of religious fundamentalism.
   "Usually when you get to an extreme fundamentalist view, it’s very bad for women," she says. "And when things are bad for women, it’s bad for the society at large. For me, what happened to Elizabeth, and many women like her, is not just Elizabeth’s tragedy but her husband’s tragedy, that he has to also live and try to function within this system. And the doctor and the other women who are in there — it’s a ripple effect of how damaging these kinds of oppressions can be. Everyone hurts from that."
   For Ms. Mann, the threat to women’s rights has been underscored by the recent Supreme Court decision upholding a ban of so-called partial birth abortion, particularly the section of the majority decision claiming women could eventually regret having the procedure done.
   "(They’re saying) ‘We’re going to save this woman from herself because if she has this kind of procedure she will just be so unhappy afterwards and won’t be able to live with herself,’" Ms. Mann says. "That went out half a century ago, that level of paternalism. I’m worried about it coming back in this country, I’m worried about losing (ground) in the equality of women. I don’t take it for granted at all."
Mrs. Packard will be staged at McCarter Theatre, 91 University Place, May 4-June 10. Performances: Fri. 8 p.m., Sat. 3, 8 p.m., Sun. 2, 7:30 p.m. Tickets cost $28-$48. (609) 258-2787; www.mccarter.org