Stage Notes: "Creature"

Heidi Schreck, smart and dynamic, is one of my favorite performers; she exudes personal power and intelligence onstage. She received a 2008 OBIE Award for acting, and has also had a half-dozen plays produced. "Creature," her first full-length New York playwriting debut, is directed by the experienced Leigh Silverman (Lisa Kron's Well, on Broadway), and has a cast of six, that includes the Drama Desk Award winning Marylouise Burke.  Set in 1401, the story revolves around a lusty, beer-brewing babe who decides she wants to become a saint. I spoke with the playwright.

 Hi Heidi. So what's Creature all about?

It's based on the first autobiography in English, written by a woman in the 15th-Century, The Book of Margery Kempe.  She couldn't read or write, she dictated it; so she had a ghost writer.

How did you come upon it?

It's a hilarious, kind of heartbreaking book that I fell in love with in college (the University of Oregon in Eugene).  It's the story of this woman who wants to become a saint but she's just so obviously not suited [for that], She's vain and proud; she loves sex and food.  She has all of these very human appetites, which she's trying very hard to eradicate.

And you thought it would be good play material.

I loved the book because you can see her making mistake after mistake in her journeys.  When I read it, I had so much empathy for her; for her desire to be perfect, such a wrong desire but one that I think is very human also.

I see Mary Louise Burke is in it.  She's capable of doing some very funny things on stage.

She plays Juliana of Norwich who was a famous mystic.   She wrote "The Revelation of Divine Love."  I had a lot of fun writing a scene for her because I imagined living in seclusion for 30 years; there are a lot of unexpected ideas in there. She was an anchoress (an anchorite was a woman, at that time, who lived in seclusion for religious reasons).  Mary Louise is not your typical saintly figure.

Tell me about the path of Margery's journeys.

She had just had her first baby and was sick and violently depressed for nine months after.  We would probably call it severe post-partum depression today.  She believed she was being visited by devils. Back in that day, devils were believed to be the cause of a lot of problems.  But then, Margery had this vision of Jesus, which I believe is true, and she believed that Jesus had healed her. So she decided to devote her life to becoming a perfect saint, and the journey is watching her try to become perfect.

What are some of the things that follow?

It's very frustrating for her husband because she decides not to have sex anymore.  Then she alienates all her friends. She turns into a zealot and tells her friends why they're going to hell.  And then she gets into trouble with the church, who were always on the lookout for heretics who they want to get rid of.

So she's in trouble with everybody.

Her dilemma is that she had this vision that saved her, but she has a family and a child, and she's trying to figure out what kind of human being she's going to be.

You believe she had this vision?

I believe she had an authentic experience, this vision.  But the idea of the play is that you can have an authentic religious experience but still not know how to live an authentic life.  You have an insight in which everything is going to be OK, but putting it into practice is so hard.

Ohio Theatre, 66 Wooster St., (866) 811-4111. Oct. 27-Nov. 21. Mon.-Sat., 8 p.m.; Mon., Nov. 2, 7 p.m.; Sat., Nov. 21, 3 p.m.

Photo by Jim Baldassare