Mary Zimmerman – författare

Mary Zimmerman's The Secret in the Wings adapts a group of lesser-known fairy tales to create a theatrical work that sets their dark mystery against her signature wit and humor. Set in a basement that is also an enchanted forest, the framing story features a child and a frightening babysitter, an ogre with a tail or is it a tale? As the babysitter reads from a book, the characters in each of the dark, enchanted stories materialize, with each tale averting disaster just as it looms to give way to the next one.As with her other theatrical creations, Zimmerman offers ample opportunity for creative costumes, props, sets and lighting to render the fairy tales in all their elemental and enduring power. Children may enjoy Zimmerman's fairy tales, but it is adults who will find them the most evocative, fulfilling and visionary.

Adventure beckons when a mysterious blind man delivers a dreaded Black Spot to an aging sea captain, plunging an innkeeper's son into a desperate race for buried treasure. Armed with only his wits against a dastardly crew of cutthroat pirates, young Jim Hawkins sets sail with the larger-than-life Long John Silver and a crew of swashbuckling rogues as Treasure Island explodes like a cannon ball onto the stage. Thrill-seekers of all ages will find inventive adaptor Zimmerman's version of the classic pirate tale both epic and intimate, hilarious and harrowing.

This play is based on Ovid's 15-volume work of transformation myths. Positioned in and around a large pool on the stage, the characters enact Zimmerman's adaptations of Ovid's tales, juxtaposing the ancient and the contemporary in both language and image. The tone of the drama likewise echoes the themes of change and contrast, from the humour of Phaeton's therapy session to the tragedy of Midas and his daughter. The volume contains a production history, the play script, and, because the visual aspect of the play is important, photographs from some of its past productions.

A twelve-member cast enacts Scheherazade's tales of love, lust, comedy, and dreams. Scheherazade's cliffhanger stories prevent her husband, the cruel ruler Shahryar, from murdering her, and after 1,001 nights, Shahryar is cured of his madness, and Scheherazade returns to her family. This adaptation offers a wonderful blend of the lesser-known tales from Arabian Nights with the recurring theme of how the magic of storytelling holds the power to change people. The final scene brings the audience back to a modern day Baghdad with the wail of air raid sirens threatening the rich culture and history that are embodied by these tales.

As in her Tony Award–winning Metamorphoses, Mary Zimmerman transforms Greek mythology—here the story of Jason and the Argonauts—into a mesmerising piece of theatre. Encountering an array of fantastical creatures and daunting challenges in their “first voyage of the world,” Jason and his crew illustrate the essence of all such journeys to follow—their unpredictability, their inspiring and overwhelming breadth of emotion, their lessons in the inevitability of failure and loss. As the goddesses Athena and Hera narrate (and participate in) the tale, we come to recognise the deep humanity of the characters in their desires and struggles. However certain they are to end in grief, our constant quests for love and the realisation of our dreams make us who we are. Zimmerman brings to Argonautika her trademark ability to encompass the full range of human experience in a work as entertaining as it is instructive.

In her latest theatrical production inspired by a classic story, Mary Zimmerman reimagines The White Snake, an ancient Chinese legend in which a snake spirit transforms herself into a beautiful woman in order to experience the human world. Adventuring down her mountainside with her companion, Green Snake, White Snake meets and falls in love with the humble, virtuous Xu Xian and convinces him to marry her. Together, the three friends open a pharmacy, but soon the remarkable healing powers of White Snake draw the attention of a treacherous monk, Fa Hai. Outraged at the union between a mortal and a snake spirit, Fa Hai takes it upon himself to destroy it. Zimmerman brings to this timeless romance her usual brilliant mix of ingenious stagecraft, song, abundant humour, and compassion.

Mary Zimmerman’s The Secret in the Wings adapts a group of lesser-known fairy tales to create a theatrical work that sets their dark mystery against her signature wit and humour. The framing story concerns a child and the frightening babysitter with whom her parents leave her. As the babysitter reads from a book, the characters in each of the tales materialise, with each tale breaking off just at its bleakest moment before giving way to the next one. The central tale is told without interruption, after which each previous tale is successively resumed, with each looming disaster averted. As in Zimmerman’s other productions, here she uses costumes, props, sets, and lighting to brilliant effect, creating images and feelings that render the fairy tales in all their elemental and enduring power.

Enlivened by rum, mutiny, and buried treasure, Treasure Island is the classic pirates’ tale, widely regarded as the forerunner of this genre. After discovering a treasure map, young Jim Hawkins sets off to sea as cabin boy aboard the Hispaniola, where he encounters one of the most unforgettable characters in literary history—peg-legged buccaneer Long John Silver, a malicious mutineer and charismatic father figure.