Evening Light, or Who Are We to Be Grateful to Each Other

by Olivia Facini

(2022)

In the summer of 1890, Swedish novelist Nora Ephrön (wink) moves to a seaside town to find some peace and quiet. Instead, she encounters a troubled minister from her past and an aspiring young poet who wants to learn how to make it as a “woman writer” when the demands of her era (and those of her fiancé) oppose such an endeavor.

The second act transposes these characters into 1974, when the obstacles around authorship and autonomy that women face are different—but not necessarily easier. Can Nora write them a better story?

Part homage to the Scandinavian artists who have influenced me (Henrik Ibsen, August Strindberg, Ingmar Bergman) and part gentle mockery of them, Evening Light explores the themes of authorship, control, femininity, and womanhood through the perspectives of female characters who refuse to merely be puppets for male authors.

Jumping from 1890 to 1974, blending the disparate styles of a nineteenth-century parlor drama and a twentieth-century slapstick comedy, and leaning into the thought-provoking nuances of metatheatricality, Evening Light is a contemporary feminist investigation of the ways that being a woman, and particularly a female author, have and have not changed over 150 years. 

Run time: 90 minutes with no intermission