The Main Off-Broadway Play Reading Series at the Louisville KY Free Public Library presented a dramatic reading of The Verge by talented local actors on May 25, 2025. Our own J. Ellen Gainor produced an introductory video that provided valuable context to the play for the audience.

Once again this event proved what we in the ISGS know so well about Glaspell’s work — it is as relevant to audiences and readers today as the day it was written, as Program Coordinator Tony Dingman confirmed: “The response to the reading was very positive, with many coming up afterward to say how much they were moved by it.  Some commented that it didn’t seem like a play from the 1920s, but rather a more modern piece.  It was a successful reading, better for the context that you were able to provide.”

MainOffBroadwayPlayReading_MAY-JUN2025

In November 2009 the Ontological-Hysteric Theater’s Incubator program for emerging artists produced The Verge directed by Alice Reagan and Performance Lab 115. New York Times critic Claudia La Rocco wrote, “It would be easy to reduce The Verge, Susan Glaspell’s 1921 play, to a feminist tract. Society forces Claire Archer into the boxes it deems acceptable; in attempting to escape those boxes, Claire goes mad. But that summary ignores the work’s wild heart, which, like its fragile, monstrous heroine, is somehow irreducible.”

Rebecca Lingafelter plays Claire in Alice Reagan's Ontological-Hysteric production of The Verge. Other performers included Sara Buffamanti as Anthony, B. Brian Argotsinger as Harry, Tuomas Hiltunen as Dick, and Todd d'Amour as Tom. Photo by Sue Kessler.

SGS members were in attendance and, while La Rocco thought that Reagan’s use of video interludes (by Jeff Clarke) of voluptuously flowering plans was “heavy-handed,” SGS member Michael Winetsky felt that the video as well as Claire’s dance performed by Rebecca Lingafelter “were effective and were in the spirit of Glaspell’s expressionism.” For full text of La Rocca’s Nov. 10 2009 review:

The Verge was produced and directed by Cheryl Black, Associate Professor, Department of Theatre, University of Missouri-Columbia, and performed by MU students at the Corner Playhouse, April 2-5, 2009.

Details here.