Production History

Tell It Slant

A play with music about Emily Dickinson
By Sharmon J. Hilfinger & Joan McMillen
Directed by Rachel Anderson

Cast: Nick Allen, Bear Capron, Siobhan Doherty, Bjorn Geske, Paz Hilfinger-Pardo, Caitlyn Louchard, Michael Sommers & Juliet Strong

THE PLAY

In September, the Pear Avenue Theatre opened its eighth season with the world premiere of a riveting new drama with music, Tell It Slant, by Palo Alto playwright Sharmon J. Hilfinger and composer Joan McMillen, in a co-production with BootStrap Foundation.

Tell It Slant portrays the little-known story of Emily Dickinson as a young woman, tracing an emotionally volatile love triangle involving  Emily, her brother Austin, and their intimate friend Susan Gilbert.  Set in the Dickinson family's Amherst, Massachusetts home and environs, the play follows Emily through her formative years. Inwardly rebellious, but outwardly obedient, she continually finds herself at odds with the social expectations of the time.  Calling herself "a boy," Emily bands together with her older brother Austin against the authority of their parents and the oppressive evangelism of the 1840s.

As Emily tries to define herself in a world that has few options for women, she experiences uncertainty and finally a betrayal that plunges her into deep despair. The play explores the creative process through which Emily discovers her remarkable poetic voice. For her, the process of creation is playful, curious, rebellious, dangerous, unexpected, and finally redemptive.

THE COMPANY

Directed by Rachel Anderson, the production features Nick Allen, Bear Capron, Siobhan Doherty, Bjorn Geske, Paz Hilfinger-Pardo, Caitlyn Louchard, Bjorn Geske, Michael Sommers & Juliet Strong. Working together in this unusual ensemble piece, the actors appear  on stage throughout the play and portray multiple roles. Dickinson's poetry is interwoven in the script both as original songs by Joan McMillen, and as scenes improvised by the chorus of actors. Playwright Sharmon J. Hilfinger has seen five of her full-length plays produced in the Bay Area and in Illinois. Her last full-length play, Deuce, was also produced by the Pear Avenue Theatre in 2006. She is a founding member of the Pear Avenue Theatre Playwright's Guild, a playwriting peer group from which the theatre produces its annual Pear Slices program of short plays. Three of Hilfinger's short plays have been produced in Pear Slices.

Joan McMillen has been composing song cycles and choral music for the past twenty-five years. Her song cycles Remembering the Way, Journey of the Raindrop, Proffer Thy Candle to the Flame, and Winter Solstice Celebration have often been performed in the mid-Peninsula community. McMillen and Hilfinger have been a playwright/composer team for the past ten years, producing two previous plays with music: Imaginal Disks, A Tale of Transformation, performed at the Mountain View Center for Performing Arts, 2001, and got water? performed at the San Francisco Fringe Festival in 2003. As well as being the composer for Tell It Slant, Joan was the pianist for the performances.

Hilfinger and McMillen have twice received grants from The Spring Creek Project for Ideas, Nature, and the Written Word from Oregon State University. These grants in 2004 and 2008 were each for a 2-week collaborative retreat to develop the script and music for Tell It Slant.

This production was the fourth new work co-produced by Pear Avenue Theatre and BootStrap Foundation. Sharmon Hilfinger founded BootStrap in 1998 with a mission to help theater artists bootstrap their way to visibility. BootStrap endeavors to help theatre artists create their own followings by offering both dramaturgical and production support to bring previously unproduced scripts to fruition. BootStrap Foundation sponsored two developmental workshops for Tell It Slant prior to this premiere.

The Pear Avenue Theatre production is funded in part by a grant from Arts Council Silicon Valley, in partnership with the County of Santa Clara, California Arts Council, and the National Endowment for the Arts.

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