HOME

HOME, presented as a radio drama for female narrator and chamber ensemble, is a theatrical update of Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s feminist essay "The Home: Its Work and Influence". Inspired by the world around us, HOME explores the psychology of a woman trapped within her house while a virus runs rampant outside. She is faced with a lineage of ladies who have been longing to leave their homes, and have an identity of their own. Originally penned in 1903, we parallel the turn of the century Tuberculosis scare to our stay at home at home COVID order during an administration trying to keep women silenced, subservient and back in the home.

Composer Whitney George and librettist Bea Goodwin have worked on three pandemic-themed radio dramas since 2020: HOME; an adaptation of Charlotte Perkin’s Gilman essay during the tuberculosis crisis (2020), AXEMAN; the tale of a New Orleans axe-murder during the Spanish Flu (2021), and most recently PAPER DAUGHTER; the cautionary story of racial hate alongside the bubonic plague outbreak in turn of the century San Franciso’s Chinatown (2022-23).

The tradition of community oral storytelling has aided in the remembrance of events past, and serves as foreshadowing events future.These three stories in IN THE THROES OF DEATH dissect the power of fear mongering in three separate times and locations. Echoes of current day issues of racism, capitalism, and consumerism are prevalent in each of these three narratives.