Joey Parsons, Kate Hamill, and Matthew Saldivar in The Light and The Dark (the life and times of Artemisia Gentileschi). Photo: James Leynse
Seventeenth-century Italian painter Artemisia Gentileschi, perhaps the most prominent woman in Renaissance art, is nowhere to be found in Alice Van Vechten Brown’s A Short History of Italian Painting, published in 1914. Nor will you see her in Wilhelm Lubke’s comprehensive, multivolume nineteenth-century tome History of Art. But she is front and center in The Light and the Dark, Kate Hamill’s new play that uses Gentileschi’s story to explore not only the dangers and difficulties of resisting the patriarchy, but also the necessity of doing so.
The play’s action starts when Gentileschi (played by playwright Hamill) sees her first Caravaggio painting at age seven. She’s entranced. When she is a teenager, she convinces her father, Orazio (Wynn Harmon), a painter, to take her on as an apprentice, a highly unusual choice at a time when the best (and the only) thing a woman could hope for was a good marriage. But Gentileschi is spirited, refusing to bow to convention or to the lecherous men who inhabit her father’s studio. One of those men, Agostino (Matthew Saldívar), jealous of and threatened by her talent, rapes her.
In order to preserve her family’s honor, Gentileschi begins a consensual affair (insofar as someone in her position can give consent) with Agostino on the condition that he marry her. But upon learning of the rape and affair, Orazio informs his daughter that marriage is impossible; her rapist is already married. The father sues Agostino for raping his daughter and for stealing a painting of his. It is unclear which he considers the greater crime.
Hamill’s Gentileschi is an unapologetically modern feminist, who’s aware of the audience she’s addressing; in fact, she starts the piece by giving a helpful art history lesson—needed context for the drama to come. At the beginning of the play, Gentileschi practices Lean-In/Sheryl Sandberg-type feminism; she tries to blend in with the men, distancing herself from other women. But after Gentileschi argues with the other apprentices about what the subject of their painting feels, the art model, Maria (played by the versatile and terrific Joey Parsons), chastises her: “You might have asked me.” It’s a powerful moment that points out the limitations of Gentileschi’s enlightenment. Later, Maria plays a key role in helping Gentileschi transition to a broader brand of female empowerment and to making art that centers women’s perspectives.
Hamill’s play is entertaining and gives a convincing, albeit horrifying, portrait of gender politics in seventeenth-century Italy. It verges on, and sometimes crosses into, sheer polemic, but perhaps this is unavoidable, given the starkness of Gentileschi’s story. As an actor, Hamill is layered and very watchable, though she hits the limits of her range at times, playing the same note of outrage a lot throughout the evening.
Where the play runs into trouble is with the male characters, who are all unremittingly awful: spineless, misogynistic, jealous, and downright evil. Though probably historically accurate, this doesn’t make for particularly engaging drama. Making Agostino a strutting caricature of toxic masculinity from the beginning lessens Hamill’s ability to reveal the danger he presents; the audience is on guard from the moment he appears. Even Gentileschi’s relationship with her father suffers from this tendency: and there is no empathy for her hero worship for Orazio, no disappointment when he lets her down, and no emotional response when she sees him for what he is: a coward and a Judas. Director Jade King Carroll demands no depth from any of the male actors, and the play is less textured for it.
The set, designed by Brittany Vasta, gives a sense of place without being overly literal and provides multiple surfaces for Kylee Loera’s projections of Renaissance and post-Renaissance art. Seth Reiser’s lighting evokes Caravaggio purposefully and effectively, while Jen Caprio’s costumes get the job done. The music (composed by Fan Zhang) and sound design (by Zhang and Megumi Katayama) help drive the story forward without calling attention to themselves. And it’s gratifying to see a show about female empowerment employ so many women in creative roles as well as onstage.
Despite being long ignored by historians (not to mention my high school art history teacher), Artemisia Gentileschi seems to be gaining traction. Wikipedia lists no fewer than six plays about her that have premiered in the past ten years. And (according to her Google ngram) she is showing up on the printed page much more often now than she was a hundred years ago. Better late than never.