The play that was never meant to be

There's a "true legend," says Katie Flynn '02, that "if you ever see a woman in black playing with your children, they will die."

Intrigued by the legend, Flynn proposed last spring that Theatre~Intime include the haunting play, "Woman in Black," by Stephen Mallatratt, in its fall lineup. Her idea was met with enthusiastic approval from the Intime planning committee, and she was all set to direct her creative offspring when she saw a grim shadow pass.

It was not a woman in black, but rather the specter of a production company that arrested the project in its infancy.

Samuel French Inc., a company that sells published scripts to theatrical groups, denied Theatre~Intime the amateur rights to "Woman in Black" because a New York City production company had bought them (along with the professional rights) for a summer run.

The Intime play was already cast and slotted as the season opener for fall 2001 when Flynn heard from Amanda Brandes '02, the business manager of Theatre~Intime, that the rights had been denied.

"Usually [getting the rights] is a pretty straightforward process," Brandes said. "There are a couple of companies that you have to write to, and usually they say OK and that's it.

"You sometimes run into trouble if a show is going on in New York," she said, "especially since we're so close to the city."

That was the case for this ill-fated show, and no amount of pleading on Brandes or Flynn's part could convince the New York company to release the amateur rights, which they held to ensure that "no one else can make money or steal their audience," Flynn said.

"A 110-seat theater is not going to take away from anybody," she said. "I told them I'd take my entire cast and crew up to watch if they'd let me put the show on.

"They had this holier-than-thou attitude, probably because we're a university, and 'we have no idea what we're doing,' " she added sarcastically.

Frustrated by the fiasco, Flynn called the playwright, Stephen Mallatratt, to ask permission to put on "Woman in Black."

"He was thrilled to hear Princeton University wanted to put it on," Flynn said. "But he also said he had no control — it was up to the production company."

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The company held fast, despite a poor public response to the New York show. It lasted only two weeks of its scheduled run, at which point Flynn appealed again, and was again denied. Although the show failed, the company had decided to take it on tour (where it again flopped, closing after three performances).

With the clock ticking and no rights to be legally had, Theatre~Intime turned to Princeton Summer Theater, its summer component, for a season opener. The cast and crew of "The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man in the Moon Marigolds," PST's 2001 project, agreed to an encore run during the first few weeks of the school year, even though only two of the five cast members are students at the university.

" 'Marigolds' is far from ideal as a season opener," Brandes said. "I feel like the last thing people are going to want to see is this heavy show. But it's an excellent show," she said, "and people should see it.

"[The play] took its title from a science project, and that's been pretty confusing. I've had a lot of people come up to me and say, 'Oh, that's a play? I thought it was a lecture.' "

Unfortunately for Flynn, a senior, the production company will probably release the rights at the end of this month — too late to schedule the show at Intime, which is booked up for the rest of the year.

Flynn plans to turn her attention to her independent work on the "Twelfth Night" with the Princeton Shakespeare Company this fall. But her disappointment at the "Woman in Black" fiasco is acute.

"It would have been an experience more than a play," she laments. "We had great publicity ideas, and Intime would have been the perfect place to have all of the light and sound effects we were planning."

Brandes agreed, on behalf of Theatre~Intime.

"We were really excited about 'Woman in Black,'" she said. "It's a different genre, a really scary, sort of horror-mystery, and it presented technical challenges that would have been fun."

Both Flynn and Brandes anticipated a successful response in the Princeton audience and expected the show to draw in a diverse range of students.

"Theater on this campus is well known to people who do theater and not so much to those who don't," said Flynn. "We have 5,000 kids, and we can't fill an audience of 100.

" 'Woman in Black' would have pulled a lot of people in and sold like an action movie. People would be daring each other to sit through it, it's so scary."

That thrill will remain untested for Princeton students, at least for the time being. The "Woman in Black" has opened up the thought that a horror show would be interesting in Theatre~Intime, Brandes said.

But she doesn't know when another such show will be proposed by a student director, and until then, we are left to wonder: What is the effect of gamma rays on Man-in-the-Moon marigolds, exactly?