AJ Clauss
On Monday, March 1 at 3:00 PM, the 2021 EST/Sloan First Light Festival will present the first public reading (free on Zoom) of HENRY MAKES A BIBLE, the new play by AJ Clauss. The play dramatizes the little-known story of the creation in disease-infested London in 1858 of the world’s most famous medical textbook, Gray’s Anatomy, with text by 31-year-old medical wunderkind Henry Gray and 360 dazzling woodcuts by his artistically gifted medical colleague, 27-year-old Henry Vandyke Carter. To learn more, let’s hear from the playwright.
(Interview by Rich Kelley)
Where did the idea for HENRY MAKES A BIBLE come from?
I used to go to the Strand bookstore on Sundays and one afternoon I was holding a copy of this medical textbook. This copy was like the 86th edition, very college-vibes, and it cost three dollars. But I couldn’t stop flipping through the pages to get to the next drawing and the next. They really are so stunning. This led me into some research on anatomical illustrations in the 1800s. That’s when I learned the book was made by Henry and Henry and I asked them out on a date. They both said yes.
What kind of research did you do?
I relied heavily on Ruth Richardson’s Death, Dissection, and the Destitute which is an incredibly wholesome book on the underbelly of Victorian London. I’m also grateful for the research of Bill Hayes, Mike Sappol, and the Wellcome Library (who have Henry Carter’s journals from most of his life).
Henry Gray
My research focused on how the book would have been made and how they got the bodies. That’s really the beating heart of this play, the bodies. London had just passed in 1834 the New Poor Law (like, omg) which was basically a big middle finger from the rich. And this was just after The Anatomy Act (1832), which allowed for bodies from the “poor class” to be sold to doctors, anatomists, schools, etc. Their argument was that the contributions of these bodies would benefit all of mankind, and they did!! However, we don’t even know their names. When you look at Gray’s Anatomy, you are looking at the insides of an actual person who was sold to either provide bread for their family, or simply because they couldn’t afford a funeral (so expensive back then!). So, this book is a burial ground. The global infrastructure of anatomy was supplied by people who were starving and working themselves to death. A tale as old as time, I suppose.
What did you discover about what seems to have been a complicated relationship between Gray and Carter? Your play makes some decisions about the sexual preferences of the lead characters. Are those based on your research into their lives?
A few people have asked me that. First, let’s just acknowledge that history is told through a heterosexual lens where hetero folks are dramatized all the time as lovers and we don’t question the magic or the romance. When we dramatize a queer relationship, it’s like, wait, were they really though? Where’s the proof? I guess my proof is that queer people have always been around and have always been written out, especially in this era, thanks to the primarily cis-white-male-heterosexual gatekeepers of history. Because of this, we’ve had centuries of trying to find ourselves in the cracks of stories because of how secret and hidden our queer ancestors had to be.
Henry Vandyke Carter, self-portrait, 1870
In Carter’s journals, there’s no doubt that Henry Gray is his best friend and his biggest threat. I’m sorry, that’s hot! Carter also admits to burning journals that have stories he’s ashamed of, he keeps a calling card bookmarked in his journal from a guy he met in Paris, and he says all the time his mind wanders from religion. I’m recalling one line in particular, “What manner of Man am I?”
As a queer writer, I love the challenge of justifying why a seemingly non-queer person is actually a little queer, or a lot queer, because we write the world we want to see. And if that’s uncomfortable for a historian, or for anyone, that’s awesome.
The two Henrys are often quite funny. Is there evidence in letters, diaries, whatever, that Henry Gray and Henry Vandyke Carter were this witty?
Thank you for saying that! So (spoiler) everything Henry Gray wrote was actually burned. That was part of my intrigue in writing this: that I would have breadcrumbs of a historical narrative and a lot of dark empty rooms to sit inside and figure out how they got from crumb to crumb. We do, however, have journals from Henry Carter, tons, such a great writer, some of his words are in the play, but he wasn’t funny at all! Which is even funnier. He was the brooding artist we can all identify with, so much to give, so cute, and so worried it’s all going to be for nothing.
I knew when I started this play that it was going to be very out of my comfort zone, as I needed to learn so much about language from a region and time far away from my middle-American roots. I wanted to find a rhythm that moved as fast as Henry Gray did (he was practically running St. George’s Hospital by the age of 28) and so I found a home in using banter as a birthright. It doesn’t matter, rich or poor, the wit became a communal love language.
Poster for Henry Makes a Bible
Much of the enduring appeal of the book Gray’s Anatomy is due to Carter’s painstakingly detailed woodcuts, all based on his own research from doing dissections. Do you plan on using any of his illustrations in your production?
Oh I’d love to! There are three scenes where the play describes the walls covered with his sketches, and that’s open to interpretation, but I’d love to see as much of his work as possible on stage. He portrays people with such grace. Even when their skin is off and their entrails are spilling out, he tilts their heads in a way that just feels nice. Calm. Home.
You include characters in the play from London’s lower classes -- the Little Boy and Grace the factory worker -- people we could say were exploited by Gray and Carter as they used for dissection the bodies of people who died impoverished. Why was it important to include these characters?
I wanted to give a life to the person on the page. The person whose heart changed the way we have understood hearts anatomically for generations, I wanted to give them a name. Her name is Grace.
As you did your research for the play, did you discover anything that surprised you?
I was surprised how erotic anatomical drawings are! Wowee! At the time, there was such a fascination at getting to see the inside of a body. It was brand new. There was so much bondage, and beautiful scenes, and you just can’t deny this incredibly complicated and cosmic feeling they are conjuring. I find myself grabbing onto my shoulders, my hips, my clavicle a lot more often these days and just saying: would you look at that.
The other surprise was truly how disgusting the treatment of the poor was. (I am writing this while hundreds of people without homes are freezing to death in Texas right now.) There were proposals to build gas chambers for the poor, and the workhouses were worse than I imagined. This comes up in the play. You watch a character sit with the idea of going to a workhouse—and resisting it: we are not that, we are not those people, this is the age of reason. And yet, somehow we are those people. We still are.
Sally McSweeney, the adventurous, pants-wearing foil for Gray and Carter, keeps things lively with her snappy repartee. Was she based on any real person in their lives?
Sally! So, (spoiler, omg) when Henry Gray dies, all the records say is that a nurse and his fiancée named Sally were in the room. That’s it. I screamed. His fiancée?! He’s always referred to as never having time to date, so this was such a surprise, and wild to me that she only gave her first name, and is never heard from again. In the play, the idea for the book is actually her idea. She loves dressing like a man even though it’s still illegal, because the colonial idea of “woman” isn’t something she’s inspired by. And she wants to hold a knife like Henry does. I just love her. She’s teaching me so much.
Proofs of the title page for the 1858 edition showing Gray’s changes to Carter’s credit line
What’s next for AJ Clauss?
I’m currently staring at a wall of post-it notes that are the anatomy of this play and I’m just really grateful this is happening. I love this story. I’ll be sad when the wall comes down.
And I’m absolutely gobsmacked to say that next month I’ll be moving to the West Village thanks to the Still Standing artist residency. It’s a free apartment for a year as a chance to focus on writing. So the next twelve months I hope to be on a spiritual high with my ancestors and the universe, and sharing this love with our community.
The more you give away the more it comes back.
The 2021 EST/Sloan First Light Festival runs from February 25 through March 29 and features readings of nine new plays. Readings open to the public are free and available on Zoom. The festival is made possible through the alliance between The Ensemble Studio Theatre and The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, now in its twenty-third year.
