the salt women
A READING VIA ZOOM MAY 16 AT 8PM 2019–20 SEASON
YALE SCHOOL OF DRAMA James Bundy, Dean Victoria Nolan, Deputy Dean Chantal Rodriguez, Associate Dean Kelvin Dinkins, Jr., Assistant Dean
PRESENTS
the salt women By Audley Puglisi Directed by Danilo Gambini Creative Team Scenic Designer
Bridget Lindsay Costume Designer
David Mitsch
Lighting Designer
Riva Fairhall
Sound Designer
Dakota Stipp
Production Dramaturg
Alex Vermillion Stage Manager
Bekah Brown
Cast
in alphabetical order Saint
Anthony Brown Hyacinth
Tyler Cruz Le Petit
Samuel DeMuria Sweet Tooth
Tavia Hunt Nana
Abigail Onwunali Ti Jean
Seun Soyemi Salome
Maal Imani West
Supported by The Benjamin Mordecai III Production Fund.
Setting
Artistic Staff
Time: late 19th century Place: the woods, not far from New Orleans
Production Stage Manager
the salt women is read through without an intermission.
Brandon Lovejoy
Fabiola Syvel
Assistant Stage Manager
Production Staff THE BENJAMIN MORDECAI III PRODUCTION FUND, established by a graduate of the School, honors the memory of the Tony Award-winning producer who served as Managing Director of Yale Repertory Theatre, 1982–1993, and as Associate Dean and Chair of the Theater Management Department from 1993 until his death in 2005. Yale University acknowledges that indigenous peoples and nations, including Mohegan, Mashantucket Pequot, Eastern Pequot, Schaghticoke, Golden Hill Paugussett, Niantic, and the Quinnipiac and other Algonquian speaking peoples, have stewarded through generations the lands and waterways of what is now the state of Connecticut. We honor and respect the enduring and continuing relationship that exists between these peoples and nations and this land.
Production Manager
Shannon Csorny
Administration Associate Managing Director
Caitlin Volz
Assistant Managing Director
Madeline Carey
Management Assistants
Sarah Cain Samanta Yunuen Cubias House Manager
Jason Gray
Yale School of Drama productions are supported by the work of more than 200 faculty and staff members throughout the year.
Pouring Salt in the Wound Salt. We depend on its chemical properties to survive. It preserves our food. It exfoliates our skin. It embalms our dead. And it has always been a crucial element for African ritual and ritual performance. Our play takes place in 19th-century New Orleans, and the salt women are the carriers of cultural and ancestral knowledge. For them, salt takes on multiple meanings and purposes. Salt purifies the body when scrubbed into the skin. It is a gift to the ancestors. It is a reminder of the Atlantic trade, in which hundreds of African slaves died in the briny sea while trying to flee the ships. And it is the essence from which these women derive their magic. The salt they collect comes from a river in the forest near New Orleans. When outsiders wander into the woods, the salt women do whatever it takes to survive—and ensure that the river stays a sacred space for their ancestors. Full of humor and wit, this play combines French farce and African ritual drama. It evokes the complex history of New Orleans’s cultures, religions, and colonialism. At its heart, the piece functions through music—harmonic humming, rushing water in the river, bare feet dancing on the ground. And although the play pours salt into the wounds of the past, it is, primarily, a celebration of African culture. —ALEX VERMILLION, PRODUCTION DRAMATURG