Rapture, Blister, Burn
By Gina Gionfriddo
Directed by Peter DuBois
Originally produced at Playwrights Horizons, New York, NY .
May 18, 2012 through June 24, 2012
About the Premiere Production: After graduate school, Catherine and Gwen chose polar opposite paths. Catherine built a career as a rockstar academic, while Gwen built a home with her husband and children. Decades later, unfulfilled in polar opposite ways, each woman covets the other’s life, commencing a dangerous game of musical chairs – the prize being Gwen’s husband. With searing insight and trademark wit, this comedy is an unflinching look at gender politics in the wake of 20th century feminist ideals.
Artistic Statement: As a Gina Gionfriddo fan, I was pleased and unsurprised that her last play, Becky Shaw, garnered so much attention and praise, including being chosen as a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. I had been tracking Gina’s career with keen interest since her teacher at Juilliard, Christopher Durang, championed her work to me. And shortly after her production of After Ashley came to New York several years ago, we commissioned her to write the play that has become Rapture, Blister, Burn. I am proud to present the world premiere of this ambitious, timely, complex play this season.
The two protagonists of Rapture, Blister, Burn, Catherine and Gwen, were best friends during graduate school. Catherine went on to become a star academic in feminist theory, leaving Gwen behind with her ex-boyfriend, Don, to hook up and marry. Twenty years later, both women ponder roads not taken and seem to covet each other’s life. When Catherine returns home to visit her ailing mother, she seizes the occasion to get back in touch with Gwen and Don to heal—or stir up—old conflicts. Looking for work, Catherine asks Don for the opportunity to teach a summer class at the undistinguished local college where he is a dean. Gwen wants to take this class. So does Avery, Gwen’s decidedly post-feminist coed babysitter. Since they meet at Catherine’s house, even Catherine’s mother gets drafted into the class discussion. These informal classes seem to cover almost every post-feminist viewpoint on a wide range of subjects. But they also excite an equally wide range of emotions. Things come to a head between Gwen, Catherine and Don and all three of them seem to get their wish, at least temporarily. Then things fall apart. Progress? Hardly.
I believe Rapture, Blister, Burn is on its way to becoming a seminal post-feminist play: a play of ideas of its time and for its time. Its working presumption that ideas have consequences is both its greatest strength and its greatest challenge. Gina’s ideas have such eye-opening, almost Shavian salience that we’re happy just to hear them. But Gina’s greatest gift as a dramatist lies in the deep-seated emotional turmoil and ambivalence that defines the relationship of her characters to the world.
It never ceases to amaze me how plays almost unintentionally reflect their times. Almost all of the plays Playwrights Horizons produced last year are filled with a kind of humanist glow. And I’ve come to realize that almost all of them began in their first drafts in the middle of Obama’s candidacy and election. Rapture, Blister, Burn is very clearly a post-Obama play. It is very much about disappointment and frustrated aspirations. It may hurt to hear, but it is also invigorating. Such is the nature of truth.
-Tim Sanford, Artistic Director
Grant Statement: As of this writing, Gina is still in the process of activating the ideas in her play and streamlining the deliciously provocative classroom scenes. Playwrights Horizons gave her a week with actors in summer 2011 to work on it further, but the rehearsal period for the world premiere production will be a crucial time for Gina to see the play on its feet and edit her script based on the work coming out of the rehearsal room. The Edgerton Foundation’s grant allows us to add a week to the rehearsal period, giving Gina and director Peter DuBois time to benefit from the collaborative input of the really great actors we expect to attract to the play, which is sure to deepen Gina’s thinking further.
Director: Peter DuBois
Pulitzer Prize, 2013 Finalist
News
Works by Alan Ayckbourn, Jon Robin Baitz, Gina Gionfriddo Part of ACT – A Contemporary Theatre Season
TheaterMania
September 21, 2012
Subsequent Productions:
4th Wall Theatre Co in Houston, TX February 28, 2019 - March 23, 2019
ACT - A Contemporary Theatre in Seattle, WA July 12, 2013 - August 11, 2013
Aurora Theatre Company in Berkeley, CA August 29, 2014 - September 28, 2014
Capital Stage Company in Sacramento, CA March 11, 2015 - April 12, 2015
City Lights Theater Company in San Jose, CA May 18, 2017 - June 18, 2017
Cyrano's Theatre Company in Anchorage, AK March 31, 2016 - April 24, 2016
Geffen Playhouse in Los Angeles, CA August 13, 2013 - September 22, 2013
Goodman Theatre in Chicago, IL January 17, 2015 - February 22, 2015
Huntington Theatre Company in Boston, MA May 24, 2013 - June 22, 2013
Maryland Ensemble Theatre in Frederick, MD April 6, 2018 - April 29, 2018
Nashville Repertory Theatre in Nashville, TN September 3, 2015 - September 19, 2015
Oregon Contemporary Theatre in Eugene, OR October 23, 2015 - November 14, 2015
PURE Theatre in Charleston, SC September 11, 2015 - October 2, 2015
Round House Theatre in Bethesda, MD January 28, 2015 - February 22, 2015
Salt Lake Acting Company in Salt Lake City, UT August 22, 2014 - November 16, 2014
San Diego Repertory Theatre in San Diego, CA April 21, 2016 - May 15, 2016
The BLUEBARN Theatre in Omaha, NE February 15, 2016 - February 15, 2016
The Wilbury Theatre Group in Providence, RI March 19, 2015 - April 4, 2015
The Wilma Theater in Philadelphia, PA October 8, 2014 - November 2, 2014
TheatreSquared in Fayetteville, AR March 31, 2016 - April 24, 2016