Key West’s Red Barn Theatre will present the fourth online offering of its 41st season with a streaming production of Jane Martin’s funny and provocative “Sez She,” starring 16 of Key West’s top female actors, directed by the Barn’s artistic director, Joy Hawkins.
The show will run March 8-20 and can be accessed through the theater’s website at
redbarntheatre.com. Tickets are $10, with viewing available 24/7 on any platform with an internet connection, be it TV, phone, or tablet.
“Sez She” is the late Martin’s final play in a series that has featured the life of modern-day women, told in a series of intimate and revealing monologues. Two previous plays, “Talking With” and “Vital Signs,” have won numerous awards, including the American Theatre Critics Best Play Award. Martin has been nominated for a Pulitzer Prize for her play “Keely and Du.”
“Sez She” offers humorous and outspoken takes on everything from childhood regression, sex, the celebration of Damn Fools Day to the virtues of being green (yes, the color green). They touch chords of hilarity, surprise, homespun philosophy, frustration and even political commentary.
The cast includes: Susannah Wells, George DiBraud, Caroline Taylor, Carolyn Cooper, Erin McKenna, Marjorie Paul Shook, Jessica Miano Kruel, Amber McDonald Good, Gerri Louise Gates, Melody G. Moore, Nicole Nurenberg, Zoe Hawkins-Wells, Vanessa McCaffrey, and Mimi McDonald.
“These are women who are caught in some way,” Hawkins said, “and I guess we’re all caught in our own particular moment – our background, our station in life, and what we do with it. They take you through all kinds of reactions – warmth, enthusiasm, flabbergasting, humor and frustration. They tell it like it is, with deep truths that any woman – or man – can relate to.”
Despite the prominence of women in her writing, there has always been a controversy about who Jane Martin really was. The prevailing theory is that “she” was actually a man named John Jory, who founded and produced the prestigious Humana Festival of New American Plays in Louisville, Kentucky, where many of Jane Martin’s plays had their world premieres. Martin never gave an interview, and never appeared at any awards ceremony.
When asked point-blank whether he was also “Jane Martin,” Jory, himself a playwright, refused to answer, saying only, “I’m not going to talk about that.”
The Minneapolis Star-Tribune called “Sez She” “enormously entertaining, more like a Disney World ride aimed at adults. Lean back, take a deep breath, and grasp the handrail firmly.”
Patrons also have the opportunity to add a supporting donation when they check out.
More information is at redbarntheatre.com or 305-296-9911.
