Bonnie Antosh
How does the behavior of researchers mirror the animals they are studying? On Wednesday, March 10 at 3:00 PM the EST/Sloan First Light Festival will present the first public reading (free on Zoom) of LEMURIA, the new play by Bonnie Antosh that asks the question: in the animal kingdom and in our own, how does a queen pass the crown to the next queen? Imagine, if you will, a queer King Lear in a North Carolina lemur lab. The playwright has more to tell us.
(Interview by Rich Kelley)
You describe LEMURIA as “an inheritance drama about dominance, queer Southern scientists, academic lineage, sex, and – yes – lemurs.” Take us back to the play’s first formative days. Which of those themes came first and how did the play come to be?
The first seed was "King Lear plus lemurs,” which stuck with me because it’s (obviously) irreverent and felt risky, in a good way.
I took a Primatology class as a distribution requirement in college, and I walked away with this abiding curiosity about lemurs and female-dominant species. When a dominant female ring-tail is sick or dying, young females will battle for control over the troop. So I started imagining the Lear archetype with a queen, Regan and Goneril as lemurs – and then as academics who study lemurs – and then also as exes. And that was pretty much that.
Left: Jade Anouka as Hotspur in the St Ann’s Warehouse production of Shakespeare's Henry IV in 2015.(Photo © Pavel Antonov). Right: Janet McTeer as Petruchio in Phyllida Lloyd's free Shakespeare in the Park production of The Taming of the Shrew at the Delacorte Theater in 2016.(Photo © Joan Marcus)
As an actress, you seem to have specialized in Shakespearean roles. Has this influenced how you create characters or write dialogue?
Completely. When I first came up with this idea, I was hunting for a science-driven story that might fit the structure of a Shakespearean or Tudor inheritance drama, but with Southern women centered as the old power and the rivals for new power. I’ve enjoyed playing male characters, watched women play many of the Big Classical Roles – Jade Anouka as Hotspur and Janet McTeer as Petruchio were particularly revelatory. At the same time, modern artists should be able to embody that epic ambition, lust, and tactical maneuvering while playing modern women.
An aye-aye photographed at night in the wild in Madagascar (Photo: Frank Vassen)
Why lemurs?
A question that haunts me day and night! On a superficial level, some lemurs, like aye-ayes, are cute in a way that’s also a bit freaky. A little demonic? Do you know what I mean? Certain lemurs have this energy of the goth kids who got picked last in Nature’s Gym Class, but who’ve become masters of adaptation as a result. So I guess… I did this for love.
You set the play in eastern North Carolina. Any significance to that setting?
The Eastern Piedmont of North Carolina – especially the university-dense area known at the Research Triangle – is one of many, many centers of Southern intellectualism and activism. I’m excited for audiences to walk away from my plays with a more realistic sense of the cultural multiplicity that exists in both Carolinas, where I’m from.
Also, Durham is the IRL home of the Duke Lemur Center, the largest center for strepsirrhine primate research outside of Madagascar. I was hoping to take advantage of a treasure in my own backyard. 2020 had other plans!
What research did you do to prepare to write the play? Did you use a consultant?
Even from afar, I’ve been grateful to be able to interview some of the DLC staff, researchers from around the country, primatologists, and anthropologists while constructing this very fictional institution of LemurLab. Dr. Patricia Chapple Wright’s gloriously-titled For the Love of Lemurs provided context on fieldwork in Madagascar, where lemurs are endemic, and on primate research over multiple decades. I’ve also spoken to academics and writers about intellectual lineage and the desire to be “claimed” by mentors or proteges in the arts. I had and have incredible mentors as a playwright, so the experience of idolizing someone so much that you can barely speak actual, intelligible words to them was – embarrassingly easy to tap into while writing this script.
In your play, the lemurs are very expressive and one even converses with one of the scientists. Was this your original concept or something that evolved? How do you imagine this happening on stage?
I’ve always pictured the lemur character, Cordelia, as a gorgeous, intricate puppet who’s voiced and manipulated by a visible actor. It would have been a tragedy to write this play with no lemurs onstage! Can you imagine?
Lemur Catta (Photo: Leila Adolphsen)
In retrospect, a lot of scientists I interviewed this summer shared a desire to be able to converse with lemurs for a day, to be able to ask how to make the animals' environments more enriching or their participation in the research process clearer. Thematically, Cordelia needed to be able to discuss aging and power with Anabelle, the director of LemurLab: Cordelia is the Fool to Anabelle’s Lear. But in writing, I discovered that I didn’t want those conversations to be “magical." They needed to come at a cost for Anabelle, who is starting to question the trustworthiness of her own mind.
Why this play? Why now?
This past year has been full of horrors, but – at least for me – nature is a source of wonder that cannot be exhausted.
Remember as a kid how curious you felt about animals? Just ‘cause. We don’t necessarily allow ourselves to access that same level of curiosity in adulthood.
This play is obviously about the threat of death or extinction, but it’s also full of stage pleasures: flirtations and battles and puppets. It’s about chosen families. It’s about the choice to devote your life – sometimes insanely – to the survival and evolution of a creature you’ve become obsessed with. Theater people will be able to relate to that devotion that borders on obsession.
Winifred at one week, an aye-aye born at the Duke Lemur Center in 2020 (Photo: Jenna Browning) https://lemur.duke.edu/winifred/
What’s next for Bonnie Antosh?
This is hard to admit, but I did not get to chill with one single lemur during the writing of this play. The lemurs don’t even care: they’re such cruel mistresses!
Still, I’ll go on some manner of celebratory pilgrimage, as soon as public safety allows.
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.
