Play by Herman Melville’s great-great-great granddaughter, Elizabeth Doss, July 26-August 3
Pittsfield, Massachusetts—From July 26 – August 3, the Berkshire County Historical Society will present Poor Herman, by playwright Elizabeth Doss, Herman Melville’s great-great-great granddaughter. The play uses Herman Melville as a subject to speculate on the line between utter genius and epic failure in us all.
Performances take place at Arrowhead’s historic barn and begin at 7 pm. Tickets are $25 for BCHS members, $30 for non-members, $10 for EBT card holders, children under 12 are admitted free. A $45 ticket includes a tour of Arrowhead. Tickets are available by using the BOOK NOW button at berkshirehistory.org. This event is sponsored by The Feigenbaum Foundation and MOSAIC/Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts.
Poor Herman unearths the life of Herman Melville, who arguably wrote America’s best and worst novels back-to-back in 1850 and 1851. The production considers what compelled Melville, struggling to salvage his declining reputation while trying to feed a growing family, to write a virtually unreadable book, Pierre or the Ambiguities, in the aftermath of Moby Dick’s initial failure with critics and readers. The play gives voice to the unsung people in his life, chiefly his mother, wife, sisters, and daughters who each contributed to his fame and flourishing and endured his decline and demise. While hindsight now celebrates his achievements, this production will investigate what it cost him to make history. All characters in the play, including Herman Melville and Nathaniel Hawthorne are played by five women: Diana Lynn Small, Katie Bender, Alexis Scott, Marie Ponce and Zoë Laiz.
Of her time at Arrowhead, Doss states, “When we came to Arrowhead in 2017, we just performed a reading of the play. This time, the company will be in residency for a month- revising text and reimagining the play to fully embody the grounds of Arrowhead. We hope the space will guide us toward new discoveries in the text.
I feel so at home and alive at Arrowhead. The space and team at Arrowhead fill me with boundless joy and inspiration. I can’t wait to continue mining Berkshire bliss from that timeless Melvillean vantage. I am so grateful for every moment on Holmes Road.”
About Elizabeth Doss
Elizabeth Doss is a writer, performer, director and playwright in Austin, Texas. She is a Co-artistic director of the theatre collective Paper Chairs, which has produced developmental productions and world premieres of her original plays Murder Ballad Murder Mystery, Hillcountry Underbelly, Mast, Poor Herman and Catalina de Erauso. Paper chairs has also produced her translation/ adaptations of Federico Garcia Lorca’s, The Audience and The Divine Narcissus by Sor Juana Inez de la Cruz. Her play Slumber Party, was featured as part of the UTNT Showcase in March 2017 and Theatre En Bloc produced her play Severe Weather Warning at the Long Center in May 2019. Doss holds a BA in Spanish and an MFA in Playwriting, both from the University of Texas at Austin. She’s looking forward to the upcoming production of her play, Poor Herman at Arrowhead in July 2024.
About the Berkshire County Historical Society
The Berkshire County Historical Society is a non-profit corporation dedicated to collecting, preserving, and disseminating the history of Berkshire County in western Massachusetts. In addition, the Berkshire County Historical Society is committed to the preservation and interpretation of Arrowhead, home of author Herman Melville, designated a National Historic Landmark. The Berkshire County Historical Society provides tours of Arrowhead, and programming dedicated to the history of western Massachusetts and the life and writings of Herman Melville. For information on visiting, go to berkshirehistory.org. The Berkshire County Historical Society is supported by the Massachusetts Cultural Council.