stage spotlight
by tom andrew
Kate Hamill’s New Version of Louisa May Alcott’s Classic Novel Comes to San Diego Little Women T
he Old Globe in San Diego will present a new stage version of the classic Louisa May Alcott bookLittle Women. This version penned by actress and playwright Kate Hamill is having its West Coast premiere. Hamill has had much experience and great success in taking
classic books, likePride and Prejudice andSense and Sensibility, to the stage. Little Women is just one more classic she is tackling. One thing she does when writing and getting these shows up and running
is keep away from other recent renditions. That means that she hasn’t seen the latest film version. “I haven’t seen Greta Gerwig’s Little Women!” Hamill said. “I try to stay away from
other versions of things I adapt, until I’m really, really done with my own – just because I don’t want to be influenced by other people’s ideas! I hear hers is great; I just need to avoid it until I know, for sure, that I won’t be tinkering with mine. I think this play will be a different version of Little Women than they’ve seen in movies, though.” The book has had many film, television and stage versions, and has been a
staple for many girls for years. The book is now 150 years old and will very likely be around for another 150 years. Hamill also read the book when she was younger. “My mom gave meLittle Women when I was entering puberty, which is really
when young women start smacking against the dictates of society,” Hamill said. “I wanted to tackle adapting it for the stage because I felt like there was a tremen- dous opportunity to do something new with it. I knew that a lot of families would be seeing it, and I wanted to create a piece that showed LGBTQ+ teens and young
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people that they have ALWAYS had a place in American stories, that their stories are universal and needed. I wanted to make a piece about the constrictions of gender roles. “I take a radical approach to adaptation,” she said. “I approach it very much as a
new play written in collaboration with another author, albeit one who is currently dead – and Alcott herself was arguably not straight and certainly chafed in her gender role, and I wanted to create a new play that, I believe, she would have supported. I also, very implicitly, wanted to create an inclusiveLittle Women – you cannot, in any production of this play nationwide, cast all white people; you must cast the Marches in an inclusive manner – which allows everybody in the audience to feel that they can see themselves reflected onstage.” Hamill, like so many women of today, realize just how unfairly they have been
treated over the years on stage, behind the camera, in front of the camera, and in their roles of playwright and stage director. All too many times they have been passed up and watch their chances go to men. Hamill feels strongly that there are not enough leading roles for women, and she is not alone. “I was working as an actress; I still work as an actress,” Hamill said. “I was deeply
frustrated by how often women were relegated to only playing tertiary charac- ters in male-based narratives: wives, girlfriends, prostitutes. There are some great roles for wives, and girlfriends, and prostitutes – but when women are pushed to the sidelines over and over again, there’s something wrong. This is especially true in the classics – and the classics are cultural touchstones for us, they shape our whole worldview. “Frankly, male playwrights were almost exclusively the only ones getting
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