Emily's Letter

Dear Patrons,

Sharp and incisive, the power of George Bernard Shaw’s brilliant play is in its deeply human core, which is all-too-frequently overlooked.  Underneath the searing politics and witty fireworks of Shaw’s masterpiece is an incredibly feeling play, a play that tells a powerful mother-daughter story that rings true for all time. 

In his introduction to Mrs. Warren’s Profession, Shaw states: “Mrs. Warren’s Profession is a play for women; that it was written for women; that it has been performed and produced mainly through the determination of women that it should be performed and produced; that the enthusiasm of women made its first performance excitingly successful; and that not one of these women had any inducement to support it except their belief in the timeliness and the power of the lesson the play teaches.”  Sadly, Shaw’s play speaks just as much to the experience of women of our era as it did to the women of turn-of-the-last-century England.  In a nation scandalized by our politicians’ dalliances with prostitutes and an international community overwhelmed by stories of the brutal exploitation of women in the sex trade, we still fail to examine the economic and social realities that forced many women into the oldest of industries. 

Fundamentally, this is a play about a woman who pulled herself out of London's slums through her wits, and once she has a child, believes she is making all the right decisions in order to provide for her daughter the social opportunities she never had.  It is a play about a daughter coming of age to discover her mother is not the woman she thought she knew; and a play about a mother who discovers her daughter is not the child she thought she had. The drama of the play lies in the question they each ask the other:  “Who are you?” And at the end of the day, each forces the other to look at herself. 

It is also a play about women breaking gender barriers.  It is the mid-1890s and Vivie, Mrs. Warren’s daughter, is among the first group of women to attend and succeed at Cambridge University.  Shaw’s play locks these two strong, unconventional women in a primal reckoning.  This is what has attracted me to this play for so many years.  And the genius of it is that Shaw has constructed this heartbreaking drama as a witty, entertaining, and delightfully provocative play, both timely and timeless.

Yours,