Shaw’s “Mrs. Warren’s Profession” A Timely Production at A Noise Within

Judith Scott as Kitty Warren and Adam Faison as Frank Gardner. Photo by Craig Schwartz

By May S. Ruiz

George Bernard Shaw’s seminal play ‘Mrs. Warren’s Profession’ is currently playing at A Noise Within (ANW) until November 17, 2017. Directed by Michael Michetti, Co-Artistic Director of The Theatre @ Boston Court, it stars Judith Scott, known for her role as Claudia Crane on the current FX series ‘Snowfall’, in the titular role of Kitty Warren.

Written in 1893, ‘Mrs. Warren’s Profession’ was one of Shaw’s earliest plays which was published in a series called ‘Plays Pleasant and Unpleasant’ in 1898. It was widely branded as being immoral not so much because it dealt with prostitution but because the woman in the center of the scandal did not show remorse for her choice of career.

Michetti says of ‘Mrs. Warren’s Profession’, “It is shockingly modern. It’s a play that examines Kitty Warren’s choices from different perspectives and without judgment. Shaw was brazen to put the plight of women front and center in his art; it’s a choice none of his contemporaries made. It’s a protofeminist play before the terminology was even commonplace.”

“When Shaw wrote ‘Mrs. Warren’s Profession’ in 1893 he exposed women’s dilemma at that time and the double standard that society imposed,” Scott pronounces. “Prostitution was highly regulated and prostitutes were punished while the men who availed of their services got away with it.

This is a woman who has prostituted herself unabashedly and has remained unashamed for having done that. It is a powerful portrayal of women and the tremendous sacrifices they make to raise their children and give them opportunities in life.”

Scott got her acting training at Webster University, alma mater of acclaimed actress Marsha Mason, in Webster Groves, Missouri. She says, “It was at one time an all-girls school but it was coed by the time I attended it. I was there for three years; I left after the third year and moved to Paris. My friends used to call me the Wandering Jude.”

“A month after I got back in the States, in 1983, I went walking with my mother in downtown Chicago. I went into The Second City Theater to use the bathroom and after I came out I heard some people laughing. I entered the room and saw people improvising. When I rejoined my mother outside I told her, ‘that’s what I want to do’. That sealed my fate, I went to the bathroom and decided I want to be an improviser,” relates Scott.

“Actually, I grew up improvising; that’s how I made my mother laugh,” Scott hastens to confess. “So I have always been an improviser but when I saw what they were doing I knew I wanted to do that. I was there in the fall and by the spring I was one of 300 touring performers with The Second City Theater Company. I did that for six years.

My mother was an amateur actress, my grandmother watched soap operas and was kind of a drama queen. The path was already laid out for me all my life and I just took up the calling. But I didn’t really make it a serious career until I was in my 40s.”

ANW Resident Artist Erika Soto as Vivien Warren and Adam Faison as Frank Gardner. Photo by Craig Schwartz

“Having studied all the classics in college, I’m familiar with Shaw’s work,” explains Scott. “’Mrs. Warren’s Profession’ is a very intellectual play; Shaw is a very word-heavy writer but there’s a tremendous amount of emotion and feeling in his work. That was what struck me – how much feeling was in his writing; it is replete with polemic discussion, there’s so much passion in it.

It is a powerful piece and playing the role of this strong and willful character was life-changing for me.  I related to Kitty Warren on a deeply personal level. The play has resonated with me because of what I know and where I come from; my ancestral history has certain parallels with her experience.

This role is not traditionally played by a woman of color and it has made a difference for me. It was a vehicle that changed my life – not only in my understanding of me as Judith, my mother’s child, but as a woman of color who comes from a long line of women of color before me who sacrificed a great deal to have the privileges that I now enjoy but take for granted.”

Adds Scott, “This is the first Shaw I performed ever and is also my first at ANW. It has been both challenging and illuminating. It helped me understand that I come with a certain history and perspective that I have learned to respect and honor more than I ever did before; Shaw gave me my identity.

By relating to the character it simply means that I have taken her seriously and deeply; I see Kitty through her eyes.  I don’t live in my skin color but I use it when it’s necessary to make a statement – in this role I have to fight diligently and ferociously. In Shaw’s work that revelation is more so.”

While Shaw wrote ‘Mrs. Warren’s Profession’ towards the end of the 19^th century to expose the prevailing culture, women in the early 21^st century are still fighting against double standards of behavior and inequality in the workplace.

Would that Shaw’s depiction of a woman being decidedly unapologetic for making her own fortune and shedding the inhibitions that society unfairly imposed serve as an exhortation for all women of this generation to fearlessly pursue their dream and resolutely determine their own destiny. May equity and parity be achieved long before the end of this century.

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