Wellesley College Theatre presents its Spring 2023 Mainstage Production OR, by Liz Duffy Adams, and invites the general public and campus community for performances on April 28 (7pm), and April 29 & 30 (2pm and 7pm) in the Ruth Nagel Jones Theatre in Alumnae Hall at Wellesley College. The show features an all-student cast and design team, with the Wellesley College Theatre Program’s Marta Rainer directing.

About the show:

OR, takes place (mostly) during one night in the life of Aphra Behn: poet, spy, and soon to be England’s first professional female playwright. Sprung from debtors’ prison after a disastrous overseas mission, Aphra is desperate to get out of the spy trade. She has a shot at a life-changing production at one of only two reopened theatre companies in a dynamic London emerging from political turmoil, plague and the Great Fire: if she can only finish her play by morning! Interruptions from sudden new love, actress Nell Gwynn; complicated royal love, King Charles II; and very dodgy ex-love, double-agent William Scott (who may be in on a plot to murder the king) complicate her opportunity with hilarious and surprising twists…Can Aphra save Charles’ life, win William a pardon, resist Nell’s charms, and launch her career, all in one night?

OR is the culmination of a semester of work for students in THST345 (Advanced Practicum: Theatre Production). Several of these students participated in a research trip to London, learning about Restoration history at places like the Theatre Royal Drury Lane, the Victoria & Albert Museum and the Tower of London, and tracing Aphra Behn and Nell Gwynn’s steps throughout the city’s historical sites. Students will share their experience at Wellesley’s 2023 Ruhlman Conference April 26.