THE YELLOW WALLPAPER

by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Read by Claire Maire Mannle

Stories for Scoundrels Series: Released 8-21-2020

A woman is isolated from her family and confined to a hideously wallpapered room.  She soon becomes aware of another woman trapped behind the yellow pattern, struggling to escape.  The Yellow Wallpaper has been described by scholar Alan Ryan as “one of the finest, and strongest, tales of horror ever written. It may be a ghost story. Worse yet, it may not.” 

The S&S is pleased to present this new reading of Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s 1892 gothic horror short story about the slow, chilling unraveling of a woman suffering both from a so-called “hysterical tendency” -- and from its prescribed cure. The story delves into gender dynamics and mental health, as well as the dangers of confinement: something we may recognize all too well in the present moment. 

Claire Marie Mannle is the Associate Artistic Director at the The Scoundrel & Scamp. At The S&S she directed The Thanksgiving Play, Eurydice and Mr. Burns, A Post-Electric Play and performed in The Yellow Wallpaper. Outside of the S&S her recent directing work includes an adaptation of Euripides’ The Bacchae (SITI Company’s Skidmore Intensive) and Nor Any Drop to Drink, a devised play about water issues in the Southwest (UA Studio Series). As an actor, she has performed around town in King Lear, The Grapes of Wrath, Macbeth, and The White Snake at The Rogue Theatre and in The Tempest andThe Comedy of Errors for Arizona Repertory Theatre. She is an Instructor for the School of Theatre, Film, and Television at The University of Arizona. A New York City native raised in the Midwest, she came to Tucson via Los Angeles where she worked with The Grand Guignolers, Cornerstone Theater Company, A Noise Within, The Antaeus Academy, and SITI Company. She has her MFA from the Dell’Arte International School of Physical Theater and her BA from Smith College