NOTE FROM THE DIRECTOR
A new play is always an event filled with opportunities. This play had us discover a fascinating woman who deserves to be known. Emily de Châtelet met the world on her own terms. She chose her lovers, she kept odd hours, a strict dietary regime, she was am expert fencer, she loved art, science. She would dip her arms in frozen water to keep herself awake so she could continue working late into the night. She lived in a world that demanded little of women except impeccable manners, and to sit pretty. Yet, she lived for three things alone: work, and insatiable ambition and discovery. Her wit, her love of fun, her intellect won the heart of many men including that of the greatest thinker and intellectual of her time, Voltaire. He would forever be in love with her. Emilie and Voltaire believed that science and art should belong to everyone, regardless of nationalities or borders. They introduced Newton to France. She was a greater scientist than Voltaire and met men and the world as an equal. She never let herself be defined by others. She welcomed obstacles and used her hurt, her pain, to grow, to change. Her life shows us a way forward. She is considered the mother of science and with her translation and commentary of the Principia she rendered difficult mathematical principals accessible and led to an explosion of mathematical discoveries in the centuries that followed. She lobbied to be accepted in the academy of science. The first woman to join their ranks would have to wait until 1979. As a child Emilie de Châtelet lay at night looking at stars trying to understand where they came from and how they were connected to us. She wanted the world to know who she was. When Lorraine asked me to direct her play, I thought immediately of my daughters Laetitia and Jemma. And I knew, I wanted them to meet this amazing human being who reveled in being a woman , a man, a scientist, an artist, and a thinker. She refused to be defined by her gender. She never said no to any part of herself. Instead she chose to be fully human and revel in every aspect of what that means. She believed in Moving Bodies. This is for them,
Myriam New York 2018 PLAY SYNOPSIS It is Paris 1728, and Secretary of the Academy of Science affirms Newton’s calculation of the force of moving bodies: Force=Mass x Velocity.
When Emilie du Châtelet corrects his mistake in an open letter printed in the Journal of Science: Force=Mass x Velocity squared, the Secretary strikes back. “Your female condition is the source of your illusions.” But Emilie is right-Newton got it wrong. No longer could men claim that the female body clouds female reason. Set against one of the greatest love stories of the eighteenth century, with two of the greatest minds the world has ever known, Moving Bodies is a Dangerous Liaisons of another kind. Defiant, excessive, and real, the unapologetic scientist Emilie du Châtelet fought for her place as one of her century’s greatest scientists with work that endures to this day. In the era of the Me Too Movement, Moving Bodies reclaims Emilie’s story and shows us a way forward. Funny, Moving and tragic, Emilie demanded the world meet her on her terms.
NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR When I started researching Emilie du Châtelet for my book on remarkable women of Paris, I asked Paris friends and acquaintances what they knew about her. “Voltaire’s mistress” was the classic response. Woman as body, sex, but not the mind. No one knew her as the child prodigy in math and intellectual in philosophy and physics. I asked how a woman of such genius in science and inexhaustible energy in love, theatre, opera, and poetry could be left in the shadows. By the time my book was published (2009), Emilie had become for me a shooting star whose tail I could not let extinguish. Hence the play. Note about Paris fashion: Emilie was known for her diamonds and frou frou dress covered in bows and pompoms. Noble women were corseted up, padded with paniers and flouncy dresses, but the men were no less bound up in their attire. Mme de Sevigné’s description of the investiture of marshals at Versailles paints a memorable picture: “The marechal de Bellefonds was totally ridiculous, because by modesty and indifference, he had neglected to attach his hosiery ribbons so that he was half in the nude. The whole troop was magnificent: M. de la Trousse among the best: he had a problem with his wig that hung to the side then too far back making one cheek jut out… But along the same line, M. de Montchevreuil and M. de Villars got hooked onto each other with such a fury, the swords, the ribbons, the lace, all the trumpery, got so twisted together, entwined, cumbersome, all the little catches, so perfectly interwoven, that no one could separate them: the more they tried, the more entangled they got like interlocking rings; finally the entire ceremony, all the reverential bows, the whole merry- go-round having come to a stop, someone had to wrench them apart with force and only the strongest could carry it off. THE CAST
JEROME PRESTON BATES* (MARQUIS, KOENIG, MAIRAN) Broadway credits include Jitney, Stickflyand Seven Guitars with Viola Davis. Bates has also appeared in numerous productions at The Public Theatre, Circle Rep, Beckett Theatre, Abington, New Federal, and NEC, and around the country at Houston’s Alley Theatre, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, The Old Globe, Yale Rep, Folger Shakespeare, Denver Center, and many more. Bates is the recipient of seven AUDELCO Awards, one TOR Award, and Omega Psi Phi’s Carter Goodson Award.
DAVID BECK* (MAUPERTUIS, SAINT-LAMBERT) Actor/Pianist will be seen as characters in the play as well as playing his own compositions and selections by Bach, Vivaldi, and Mozart. David wrote, co-produced, acted in, and composed the score to the award-winning short film For Francis, as well as the web series Spring Street, which was nominated for Best Screenplay at the International Online WebFest in London. He has performed in plays at Cherry Lane, LaMaMa, SoHo Playhouse, Primary Stages, and more.
LEE MIKESKA GARDNER* (EMILIE DU CHATELET) Lee is so pleased to play this fascinating woman. Lee has the Elliot Norton Award for Outstanding Actress and recently played a contemporary of Emilie’s, Olympe de Gouges in The Revolutionists, by Lauren Gunderson. Other Boston roles: Brodie in Precious Little, Tess in Marjorie Prime, and Carla in the IRNE nominated Chosen Child at Boston Playwrights’ Theatre. Favorite roles include Terry in Sideman (Helen Hayes Nomination for Outstanding Actress) and Florence Foster Jenkins in Souvenir at 1st Stage.
SARAH OAKES MUIRHEAD* (FRANCOISE DE GRAFFIGNY) Actor/Singer/Director was trained at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art and is also a proud graduate of Boston U’s BFA Acting program. Her many stage appearances include Tartuffe,Sunday in the Park with George, A Little Night Music (Huntington Theatre Company, dir. Peter DuBois), Spring Awakening, Fiddler on the Roof (New Repertory Theatre, dir. Austin Pendleton).
JONATHAN TINDLE* (VOLTAIRE) NYC credits include The Possibilities, Arcadia, Pity in History, No end of Blame, Scenes From an Execution, Pentecost, Not All Korean Girls Can Fly, Welcome to Our City, The Madness (NYIT award nomination), The Swan (Helen Hayes award nomination), Mrs. Warren’s Profession (Helen Hayes award nomination), and more. Tindle has appeared in several films, including The Day Lincoln Was Shot and The Hunley. On TV the actor has been seen in Law & Order, All My Children, Person of Interest, Boardwalk Empire, and others.
*appearing courtesy of actors’ equity association, an actors’ equity association approved showcase. THE CHARACTERS
EMILIE DU CHATELET (December 17, 1706—September 10, 1749) Born Gabrielle Emilie Le Tonnelier de Breteuil, she was married at 19 to the Marquis Florent Claude du Châtelet, gave birth to three children (one died) with the Marquis (one later with Saint-Lambert), and became one of the important physicists whose work prepared the way for Einstein’s theory of relativity. (See PBS NOVA 2005 EINSTEIN’S BIG IDEA.) After translating Leibniz for the reading public, she studied algebra and geometry with scientists Maupertuis, Clairaut, and Koenig, and engaged in the international discourse about physics. Her magnum opus, the translation from Latin and commentary of Newton’s Principia, finished minutes before she died, remained the standard text in French until 2001. For fifteen years she and Voltaire lived and worked as soul-mates and lovers.
VOLTAIRE (November 21, 1694—May 30, 1778) François-Marie Arouet, known as Voltaire, was an important writer of the French Enlightenment. Historian, playwright, fiction writer, and philosopher, he was famous for his wit and satire (Candide parodies Leibniz’s philosophy), wrote adamantly against religious intolerance, criticized the French government, advocated freedom of speech and the separation of church and state. The death of Emilie du Châtelet, his partner in love and work, left him crushed: “It is not a mistress I have lost but half of myself, a soul for which my soul seems to have been made.”
MARQUIS FLORENT CLAUDE DU CHATELET Emilie’s loyal husband was an army officer whose service was prized by Louis XV who rewarded him with the governorship of Semur-en Auxois. For most of the time his military duties drew him far from home. After their marriage he quickly recognized that he was no match for his brilliant wife and tacitly accepted her partnership with Voltaire whom he knew well and respected. PIERRE LOUIS MAUPERTUIS (July 17, 1698—July 27, 1759) Pierre Louis Moreau de Maupertuis was a French mathematician, philosopher and man of letters. He taught Emilie geometry and had a brief affair with her. Later he became Director of the Academy of Science, and the first President of the Prussian Academy of Science, at the invitation of Frederick the Great. After Emilie had been accused of plagiarism by Koenig, Maupertuis was slow to defend her even though he knew her work, but finally acknowledged her as the author of Foundations of Physics. JOHANN SAMUEL KOENIG (July 31, 1712—August 21, 1757) Koenig was a mathematician with whom Emilie studied. He is known mostly for disagreeing with Leonard Euler about the principle of least action. He and Emilie worked together for a short period but they could not get along. After the publication of her Foundations of Physics he accused her of plagiarism of his ideas for the book. D’ORTOUS DE MAIRAN (November 26, 1678—February 20, 1771) Mairan was a geologist, physicist, and chronobiologist. Over the course of his long life (92 years) he did experiments about astronomy, physics, and biological rhythms, to name a few. He was a member of several scientific societies and in 1743 was made Secretary in Perpetuity of the Academy of Science. FRANCOISE DE GRAFFIGNY (February11, 1695—December 12, 1758) Françoise de Graffigny had a difficult marriage, lost her three children soon after their birth and eventually moved to Paris to find a milieu conducive to her artistic tastes and literary ambitions. Her novel Lettres d’une Peruvienne was a success as was her comedy Cenie. Her second play was a flop and her novel fell into disfavor later on. She spent three months at Cirey with Emilie and Voltaire which began as very congenial but later turned sour. JEAN FRANCOIS DE SAINT-LAMBERT (December 26, 1716—February 9, 1803) Jean François de Saint-Lambert wrote poetry from adolescence and later read in salons but did not rush to publish it. In 1739 he joined the Lorraine Guards and participated in military campaigns until 1758. During Emilie’s residence in Lunéville he entered into a liaison with her which resulted in the birth of a daughter who died soon after birth in September 1749. Unlike Voltaire who was shattered after Emilie’s death, Saint-Lambert moved to Paris and quickly recovered from his grief. He had two mistresses of note, the Marquise de Boufflers and later Sophie d’Houdetot with whom he spent his later years. His major poetry work “The Seasons” appeared in 1769. THE CREATIVE TEAM
LORRAINE LISCIO Author & Playwright Lorraine Liscio was director of Women’s Studies at Boston College. Her other plays inlcude City of Ladies (about Christine de Pizan), short version performed at the Cloisters’ Medieval Play Festival; The Sheltered Fire (the letters of Heloise and Abelard); and Gono Superiore. Her publications include: Paris and Her Remarkable Women, and literary journal articles on Toni Morrison, Marilynne Robinson, Nadine Gordimer, Eudora Welty, Georges Bernanos, and Stephane Mallarme. For the past six years she has been a member of Pulse Ensemble Theatre under the direction of dramaturge Lezley Steele. Before being Adjunct Professor in English and Director of Women’s Studies at Boston College, Liscio formerly taught Romance Languages at UVM and Syracuse University.
MYRIAM CYR Director Poet Laureate, theater director, critically acclaimed writer, and award- winning actress Cyr works include Letters of a Portuguese Nun, named “book of the Month” by The Guardian and translated into eight languages. She recently directed Simon Says at the Culture Project with Brian Murray, which The New York Times hailed as “thrilling,” and last year Cyr brought I Am Antigone to Theater for the New City. As an actress, Cyr was a member of Steven Berkoff’s company at the Royal National Theatre and played Salome opposite Al Pacino. She is currently producing Hedda Gabler for Universal Studios in a screenplay adaptation by Oscar and Tony Award winner Christopher Hampton. Her next projects are Saltonstall (One Man’s Stand Against the Salem Witch Trials) by Michael Cormier and Myriam Cyr and a new play Reparations by James Sheldon.
DAVID BECK Music Composer David wrote, co-produced, acted in, and composed the score to the award-winning short film For Francis. Through his non-profit film company The Great Griffon, David produced, acted, wrote, directed, and composed the score to the web series Spring Street (www. springstreetseries.com), which was nominated for Best Screenplay at the International Online WebFest in London, as well as the upcoming short film Backup Plan. Off and Off-off Broadway acting credits include 59E59, Cherry Lane,1st Irish, LaMama, SoHo Playhouse, Roust Theatre, and developmental work with Primary Stages and American Lyric Theatre. Regional acting credits include Mirror Rep (VT), Human Race (OH), and Ivoryton Playhouse (CT). Graduate of Marymount Manhattan’s acting program. Thank you, Myriam, for inviting me to collaborate. For more info: www.davidGbeck.com THE CREATIVE TEAM (cont.)
CAROLYN WONG Lighting Designer Carolyn is a lighting designer whose recent work includes The Hollower (New Light Theater Company), One Thousand Nights and One Day (Prospect Theater Company), Bullets Over Broadway (National Tour), Rockin’ Road to Dublin (National Tour), Une Autre Passion (Le Ballet du Grande Théâtre de Genève). She is an alumna of Oberlin College, and a native of San Francisco. www.wongnumber.com
CAT STRAMER Set & Costume Designer Cat is delighted for the opportunity to be back in New York as a part of the Dream Up Festival at the Theater for the New City. Past show credits include: I am Antigone (Theater for the New City, New York); Simon Says (The Culture Project, New York City and The Boston Center for the Arts) and numerous projects in Boston. When Cat is not lending her insights to mount theater productions, she is an architect, interior and graphic designer by trade.
SUSAN VITALE Wig Designer Susan is a Boston based hair stylist by trade and has worked with stage hair and makeup for numerous productions over the past 20 years. We can often find her onstage as well. Her most memorable roles include Velma Von Tussell in Hairspray, Kitty in Chicago and Chiffon in Little Shop of Horrors.
KRISSY DELAHANTY Production Stage Manager Krissy is excited to be working on Moving Bodies. Previously, she was the PSM for Elephant at Planet Connections Theatre Festival. Recent credits: Dead Flowers as a part of Soundbites for Theatre Now New York. Henry IV and Measure for Measure (Hip to Hip Theater Company), Witch, Please (PIT), Our Lady of 121st Street (Eclipse Theater Company), Working: A Musical (Marymount Manhattan College) MMC Class of 2018.
KATIE MCCOY Props Manager Katie is a New York City-based Prop Designer, Actress, and Carpenter. She has a passion for both onstage and behind the scenes work. Her prop credits include Helvetica and Working: A New Musical. She is a recent graduate of Marymount Manhattan College. www. KatieMcCoyNYC.com
ABIGAIL GRUBB Marketing/Social Media Abigail is a New York City based Director and Administrator who is passionate about new work. Select directing credits include Last Night at the Arcade, Doug and Ava Say “I Love You”, and The Authorized Practitioner. She is a graduate of Marymount Manhattan College. Abigail is currently on staff as the Development Associate at Live & In Color. ACT ONE Scene 1 Prologue Scene 2 Paris 1778 Voltaire’s home Scene 3 Paris February 15, 1734 letter Scene 4 Emilie’s mansion Mardi Gras Ball Scene 5 Next day Emilie’s mansion Scene 6 Next day Emilie’s mansion Scene 7 Following week Emilie’s mansion Scene 8 Three weeks later a Paris street Scene 9 Three weeks later Emilie’s mansion Scene 10 December 28, 1737
ACT TWO Scene 1 1740 Château de Cirey Scene 2 Two months later Cirey Scene 3 Following week Cirey Scene 4 A month later Cirey Scene 5 Paris, Maupertuis’ living room January 1743 Scene 6 February 22, 1743 letter Scene 7 July 11, 1743 letters Scene 8 September 15, 1746 letter
ACT THREE Scene 1 Paris 1747 Emilie’s mansion Scene 2 May 17, 1749 Paris Scene 3 Lunéville June 10, 1749 Scene 4 August 3, 1749 letter Scene 5 Lunéville September 10, 1749