Drama Script Review
By Aronne Guy
The play is available through the New Play Exchange
The name Hrotsvitha of Gandersheim doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue, but should be familiar to women artists. An abbess who lived in the 12th century, she was a prolific writer who courageously reworked the plays of Terence to bring them into line with Christian values. She defended the peculiarity of her profession—a woman writer—by reframing her ambition as a service to God. The Almighty wanted her to be a writer, and thus was willing to work with the humble clay of womanhood. Raised in the Pentecostal church, I am only too familiar with this argument, since I often heard it used by women preachers and church leaders in the 1980s. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
The never-ending struggle to transcend ancient patriarchal values is a key theme of the play No Place Like Gandersheim by Elizabeth Dement, which had its world premiere at the Skylight Theater in Los Feliz in June 2023. Dement tells a fanciful story which takes as its launching point the life of Hrotsvitha, known here by the snappy nickname Roz. (This is a review of the play as a written work, not as a performance.) After her play is rejected by the Emperor Otto, Roz drifts through the ages—still writing, still waiting for a moment when women will be able to express themselves artistically without all the bullshit. In early 21st century Los Angeles, perhaps she will finally have her opportunity.
It is hard not to think of Virginia Woolf’s Orlando as it becomes clear in the second act that Roz is about a thousand years old. Roz does not switch genders, but she does make a transition that Orlando never attempts. While Virginia Woolf’s character is defined by a certain intractable Englishness, Roz throws off her German identity and becomes fully American—a divorced lesbian writer/producer with an emotionally neglected 15-year-old daughter and a hit show about nuns.
Bringing a character like Hrotsvitha to life—eternal life, even—is a fine enterprise that I can get behind. In spite of her well-deserved place setting in Judy Chicago’s Dinner Party, she still needs all the press she can get. We stand on the shoulders of giants—or perhaps, as suggested by Chicago’s work, we eat off their shapely plates. She didn’t make the cut for Caryl Churchill’s Top Girls, but No Place Like Gandersheim gives Hrotsvitha another chance to shine.
The first act is the closest to telling her actual story, as it takes place in a German abbey in the 12th century. While providing a useful quasi-historical framework for Dement’s fictional take, the dialogue in this section is hard to accept—there’s a flippancy that creates an uncomfortable feeling of tacked-on hipness. It’s jarring to read. As spoken on a stage, though, the contemporary-sounding dialogue is probably really funny, cool, and relatable to an audience. It’s not really history. I get it.
The second act, taking place in the present day, leaves the historical issues behind and suddenly the dialogue works on the page. Otto still exists, but instead of the emperor he is the head executive at an unnamed network. Throughout the play, men are an invisible force, always offstage, yet always in control. Like offstage violence in a Shakespeare play, the men’s invisibility enhances the perception of their power. The author is clearly at ease in the second act. The machinations of the network executives provide high intrigue and support the theme.
The third act is also quite clever and has a twist that works seamlessly within the plot. The bittersweet ending is perhaps the most accurate way to sum up the life of Roz, as reimagined in a current faux-liberated milieu and a future techno-dystopia. A message comes through that without human liberation, there is no female liberation; furthermore, writing is an inherently selfish act that does not have much impact on the struggle for either. It’s a bit hopeless after all, but not inaccurate.
No Place Like Gandersheim makes a valuable contribution to theater in its clear-eyed vision of the sacrifices necessary to live as a creative woman, regardless of era, while bringing attention to an under-recognized early female playwright. Here’s hoping we see another production soon.
Aronne Guy is a freelance writer, teacher, and musician, performing as Aron Blue. Her writing was recently featured in The Common’s Dispatches section in collaboration with her father. Currently in Las Vegas, she is co-writing the scandalous memoirs of a professional gambler, occasionally releasing music, and teaching part-time at UNLV.