By Liam Otten
Since her "rediscovery" by feminist scholars in the 1960s, author Kate Chopin (1851-1904) has emerged as a major figure in St. Louis' rich literary heritage. Though her masterwork, "The Awakening" (1899), initially gained a certain notoriety for its forthrightness about issues of female sexuality, it is only in recent years that the book has become a popular and critical favorite, inspiring at least one novel, several films and a virtual armada of literary analysis. So it is perhaps not surprising that the story of Edna Pontellier --a New Orleans matron who leaves her husband, takes a lover and otherwise scandalizes polite society --has never been brought to the stage.
Until now. Henry I. Schvey, Ph.D., professor and chair of the Performing Arts Department (PAD) in Arts & Sciences, is currently writing a full-length theatrical adaptation of "The Awakening." Auditions were finalized earlier this week and the show will debut next semester in a staged reading directed by Annamaria Pileggi, senior artist-in-residence in the PAD, in the A.E. Hotchner Studio Theatre.
Yet Schvey, ever the teacher, has elected not travel this uncharted territory alone, instead bringing with him some two dozen students of drama, literature, literary history, creative writing and American culture. "Drama 424: Kate Chopin's 'The Awakening' from Page to Stage," co-taught with Daniel Shea, Ph.D., professor of English in Arts & Sciences, examines Chopin's classic from critical and historical perspectives and takes students deep into the playwriting process; by semester's end, each student will have developed a dramatic adaptation of his or her own.
"The magic of this kind of course is that it really mixes the scholarly and the creative," said Schvey. "Students will make an intensive study of the author's life, work, environment and contemporaries, but will also have to find ways to make the drama on stage more than just a rereading, to make it tangible to an audience today."
Shea, who regularly teaches 19th-century women's fiction, pointed out that the book "stood alone for a long time, except for comparisons with European writers like Ibsen and Flaubert. Now that we're looking more closely at Louisa May Alcott and other women writers of that period, we're able to put Chopin in more of a context. And what we're seeing is that she is not a perfect sister to many of those writers, who are identified with the New York-to-Boston nexus, both because of geography and because of her Creole influences."
Chopin was born in St. Louis at 801 Chouteau Ave. (now the site of the Ralston Purina Complex) and raised at 1118 St. Ange Ave, attending the Sacred Heart and Visitation acadamies. She married New Orleans businessman Oscar Chopin in 1870 but returned to St. Louis in 1884, shortly after his death, to embark on a literary career. After a decade of only intermittent publishing success, she released the short story collection "Bayou Folk" in 1894, followed by "A Night in Acadie" in 1897 and "The Awakening" in 1899. She died in 1904 in her home at 4232 McPherson Ave.
Shea noted that Chopin's papers, including the original handwritten manuscripts and correspondence for "The Awakening," now reside in the collection of the Missouri Historical Society --a prime resource for scholars. "Our students can do more than just sit in class and discuss the ending," he said jokingly. "They can get at certain problems in ways that students working somewhere else wouldn't be able to."
For Schvey, however, adapting the book is simply the realization of a longtime dream. "'The Awakening' has tantalized me for close to 20 years," he noted, recalling his first encounter with the novel in the early 1980s. "I was powerfully moved by Chopin's exploration of psychology and thought that there was a very strong visual sense that might lend itself to the stage. I felt there was something there that needed to be dramatized."
Yet the process is not without challenges. "The toughest thing --for a beginning playwright or anyone else --is finding the right voice," Schvey mused. "So much of the novel is seen from Edna's perspective, whereas the theater has to dramatize events primarily through dialogue. The trick is finding a way to remain true to the novel's ambiguities and to suggest the differences between Edna's point of view and Kate Chopin's point of view."
"It's a novel about conflicts, not simply liberation," Shea concluded. "We've tried to give students reasons to appreciate Chopin's achievement, but we also want to move them away from na•ve enthusiasms."