THE SALT WOMEN, Yale School of Drama, 2020

the salt women

A READING VIA ZOOM MAY 16 AT 8PM 2019–20 SEASON

YALE SCHOOL OF DRAMA James Bundy, Dean Victoria Nolan, Deputy Dean Chantal Rodriguez, Associate Dean Kelvin Dinkins, Jr., Assistant Dean

PRESENTS

the salt women

By Audley Puglisi Directed by Danilo Gambini Creative Team Scenic Designer

Bridget Lindsay Costume Designer

David Mitsch

Lighting Designer

Riva Fairhall

Sound Designer

Dakota Stipp

Production Dramaturg

Alex Vermillion Stage Manager

Bekah Brown

Cast

in alphabetical order Saint

Anthony Brown Hyacinth

Tyler Cruz Le Petit

Samuel DeMuria Sweet Tooth

Tavia Hunt Nana

Abigail Onwunali Ti Jean

Seun Soyemi Salome

Maal Imani West

Supported by The Benjamin Mordecai III Production Fund.

Setting

Artistic Staff

Time: late 19th century Place: the woods, not far from New Orleans

Production Stage Manager

the salt women is read through without an intermission.

Brandon Lovejoy

Fabiola Syvel

Assistant Stage Manager

Production Staff THE BENJAMIN MORDECAI III PRODUCTION FUND, established by a graduate of the School, honors the memory of the Tony Award-winning producer who served as Managing Director of Yale Repertory Theatre, 1982–1993, and as Associate Dean and Chair of the Theater Management Department from 1993 until his death in 2005.

Yale University acknowledges that indigenous peoples and nations, including Mohegan, Mashantucket Pequot, Eastern Pequot, Schaghticoke, Golden Hill Paugussett, Niantic, and the Quinnipiac and other Algonquian speaking peoples, have stewarded through generations the lands and waterways of what is now the state of Connecticut. We honor and respect the enduring and continuing relationship that exists between these peoples and nations and this land.

Production Manager

Shannon Csorny

Administration Associate Managing Director

Caitlin Volz

Assistant Managing Director

Madeline Carey

Management Assistants

Sarah Cain Samanta Yunuen Cubias House Manager

Jason Gray

Yale School of Drama productions are supported by the work of more than 200 faculty and staff members throughout the year.

Pouring Salt in the Wound Salt. We depend on its chemical properties to survive. It preserves our food. It exfoliates our skin. It embalms our dead. And it has always been a crucial element for African ritual and ritual performance.

Our play takes place in 19th-century New Orleans, and the salt women are the carriers of cultural and ancestral knowledge. For them, salt takes on multiple meanings and purposes. Salt purifies the body when scrubbed into the skin. It is a gift to the ancestors. It is a reminder of the Atlantic trade, in which hundreds of African slaves died in the briny sea while trying to flee the ships. And it is the essence from which these women derive their magic.

The salt they collect comes from a river in the forest near New Orleans.

When outsiders wander into the woods, the salt women do whatever it takes to survive—and ensure that the river stays a sacred space for their ancestors.

Full of humor and wit, this play combines French farce and African ritual drama. It evokes the complex history of New Orleans’s cultures, religions, and colonialism. At its heart, the piece functions through music—harmonic humming, rushing water in the river, bare feet dancing on the ground. And although the play pours salt into the wounds of the past, it is, primarily, a celebration of African culture.

—ALEX VERMILLION, PRODUCTION DRAMATURG