Maryland

by Lucy Kirkwood

Genres: Plays

19 pages, ebook

First published October 1, 2021

About the author

British playwright and screenwriter.

Reviews

[Doug · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lucy Kirkwood is by far my favorite contemporary female playwright (perhaps my favorite contemporary playwright period), and this short sharp shock of a play about what far too many women go through, and their omnipresent fear and rage, is good indication why. The full script is available online (in the first link below) and is well worth the twenty minutes it takes to read - I only wish the BBC production were available in this country to view - someone in the UK put it on YouTube please!

https://issuu.com/rct123/docs/marylan...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXb3h...
https://www.theguardian.com/stage/202...
https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-ra...

[kenzie · Rating 5 out of 5]

quite a graphic read again so check online tw before reading but so honest and recognisable for the now. explores and arguably laments the pertinent question of ‘why are women so killable?’. definitely worth a read or a watch if you’re comfortable to do so.

[Wei Han · Rating 5 out of 5]

This just sears.

[Marissa · Rating 4 out of 5]

This short, viscerally impassioned play — evidently written by Lucy Kirkwood in just two days — is being performed all over the UK in Fall 2021 and is currently available to read on the Royal Court Theatre website.

Where I live (the U.S.) it feels like the strongest social-justice outrage right now is about violence against people of color, but judging by this play, in Britain the conversation is more about sexual and physical violence against women. As such, the title Maryland does not refer to the U.S. state but to the state of being female, the state of being someone who might be named Mary. It's about how Maryland is a frightening, dangerous place to inhabit, how "we aren't safe, and we are sorry."

One aesthetic comment: the stage directions call for the use of an "unbearable sound" at key moments, often to substitute for the word "rape" or "murder", e.g. "every three days a woman is [UNBEARABLE SOUND] by a man." This made me think of two other recent plays that call for horrifying, unexplained sound effects at key moments: The Humans by Stephen Karam and Heroes of the Fourth Turning by Will Arbery. With this third example, I'm calling this an official trend among Millennial playwrights.

[Jill Nitsche · Rating 5 out of 5]

Second time teaching this, and it’s just incredible.