January 24 – February 2
Spreckels Performing Arts Center

On June 16, 1816, in the early hours of the morning
Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin had a dream.
19 months later, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley anonymously published 
‘FRANKENSTEIN.’
The world has never been the same.

This winter, ‘Mary Shelley’s Body’ returns 
for six performances only, in a fully staged production
featuring Sheri Lee Miller as Mary Shelley.

Tickets now on sale at SpreckelsOnline.com.

Mary Shelley is dead.
Or so she assumes.
When the once-scandalous author of ‘Frankenstein’ suddenly finds herself haunting her own grave in a strange, abandoned, apparently inescapable cemetery — in the middle of a lightning storm, no less — she reluctantly accepts the challenge of retelling her own tumultuous life story. With no one to speak to but her rocky tomb and the freshly buried body within it, Mary wanders among the crypts, vividly recounting the sometimes humorous, often heart-breaking details of her long life and many losses – including the mother who died in childbirth, her drowned poet husband Percy Shelley, and their tiny baby, born too early, lost too soon. Mary soon finds unexpected links between her own knotty life and that of The Creature from her novel. To these, she adds a few of her fanciful “Flesh Histories,” the unspoken back-stories Mary once conceived, but never wrote — one for each of the Creature’s various limbs and organs. Eventually, Mary comes to suspect that all of these tales are pieces of a puzzle that, if solved, might free her from from this graveyard purgatory. As the rising storm rages on overhead, Mary pursues a terrifying series of startling self-discoveries. Ultimately facing her one greatest fear, the terrible secret she carried through her life, and hoped to escape by taking it to her to the grave.

A lyrical blend of science fiction, horror, fantasy, and historical fiction, ‘Mary Shelley’s Body’ – a play for one actor – is an enthralling celebration of artistic passion, resilience, and the power of undying love.

 

Questions?
Call or text the playwright, David Templeton, directly at 707-338-6013]