meet the bitches: mary surratt

Mary Surratt Cameo by Andrew Yolland

Witching Hour is remounting Bitch. (perception. reality. execution) to take to the Kansas City Fringe festival. WH has never been to fringe before, and we decided that Bitch, one of our most successful shows ever, had the greatest potential to show off what we can do. The original production of Bitch was nominated for both Theatre Arts Guild and Omaha Entertainment Awards for Best Original Play. The new script has been reworked with area playwrights, slam poets, and designers to make a show that is complicated, beautiful, and soaked in blood. Bitch weaves together the lives–and deaths–of these women, exploring who earns their reputations and those who are just victims of hysteria, revolution, war, and bad PR. We wanted to give you a little background on the ‘bitches’ themselves, and invited the writers to give us a little background on who these women were and how they approached their stories, as well as sharing some of the inspiration pictures for their design and costumes. 

Andrew Yolland has long been one of the best writers in our ensemble, and we were happy to bring him in for the rewrites of Bitch,as well as having him design the amazing cameos featured here and on our promotional materials.  He is going to give us more information on Mary Surratt, the only American bitch featured in our play.

On July 7th, 1865, Mary Surrat was hanged after being convicted for aiding and abetting John Wilkes Booth and his co-conspirators in the assassination of President Lincoln. She was the first woman to be executed by the United States government.

Unlike the other conspirators, she did not appear to be directly involved in the plot to kill Lincoln. She owned the boarding house used as a sort of base of operations, and to what extent she was aware of the plot remains a matter of historical dispute.

On the writing team, we all agreed that Mary Surratt was perhaps the most complicated character to write for Bitch. Unlike the other characters, whose voices we could draw from journals and correspondence, next to no writings or direct quotes from Mary Surratt survive. Also separating her from the pack, Mary Surratt was not historically significant herself before her trial and execution. The thing that made her famous killed her in the same fell swoop.

costume inspiration for Mary Surratt

The fervor and national anguish following Lincoln’s assassination swept Mary both into the trial as a co-conspirator and also up onto the gallows. Many things about the trial seem either rushed or tainted by post-war zealotry and nationalism. It was a military tribunal, which carries a more relaxed standard of evidence. The government was unable to appoint public counsel for the conspirators because no lawyer would take the case for fear of being accused of disloyalty. Interviews with witnesses were conducted by union soldiers and may have been coerced. In other words, by the time Mary was arrested, her fate was probably already decided.

the hanging

That does not, however, mean she wasn’t guilty. Mary and her whole family were known to be loyal to the Confederacy. One of her sons served as a confederate soldier, another served as a courier and spy in the north. Before her alleged involvement with Booth’s plot there is no record of Mary taking any action that would be considered treasonous to the union, but as a writer I personally felt that perhaps this stemmed from a deeply held belief that the confederacy would prevail.

humor…or a costume opportunity?

When I was brought on during the rewrites to help rework the Mary Surratt plotline, I  latched on to that idea: a woman lost in a world that she had gravely misjudged. I was fascinated by how the Surratts—who were confederates–had the misfortune of living barely north of where the line in the sand was drawn. Had they lived in Virginia, they would not have been traitors, merely losers. In Mary, I felt a sense of entitlement and self-righteousness that I think may have prevented the gravity of her situation from really sinking in.

the proper accessory for hanging a lady

And then there’s Anna. Oh, Anna.

Hot Mess Inspiration for Anna Surratt

Anna Surratt,Mary’s surviving daughter While barely a footnote in history, Anna played a major part in our original draft, and her role in the madness has only grown with the new rewrites. The fact that she might have been permanently mentally scarred by her mother’s death fascinated us, as did her apparent obsession with John Wilkes Booth. I wanted to use her as a spectator, to explain to the audience the complicated political reality surrounding her mother. All of our main characters were mothers, but Anna was unique as a child who was directly involved, who pleaded for her mother’s life, who was old enough to understand.

I wondered, “What’s it like to watch your Mother caught up in that, be killed for that?”

Thank you, Andrew! (and thanks to our costume designer/director Jenny Pool for the inspiration pictures!)

There will be an Omaha premiere of Bitch on July 17th&18 for our friends, family and fans. We’d love to see you there!

Are you going to the Kansas City Fringe Festival? You can already buy tickets to our performances July 20-23rd!