Latest news with #Mary:TheBirthofFrankenstein
Newsroom
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Newsroom
New NZ play gives life to the author behind Frankenstein
It has been over 200 years since an 18-year-old Mary Shelley responded to a literary challenge from her peers by writing the novel 'Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus'. In that time, new genres have been born and become staples of our modern culture. Many of them have that pivotal moment in the history of literature to thank for it. Now, a new play explores the life of the woman behind the pen, while fictionalising the night that Frankenstein was born. 'Mary: The Birth of Frankenstein' is set in the dire Geneva summer where the mother of gothic horror did her best work. The production examines the fascinating real life of the woman herself and the many tragedies and hardships that shaped her and her work. Screenwriter Jess Sayer has been preparing for the release for several years. 'As a writer I was really fascinated by the period of time she was creating Frankenstein in and what that must have been like as a woman,' she tells The Detail. Frankenstein spoke to Jess like nothing else and inspired her to write a gothic horror story of her own, with Mary herself as the main character. It's a love letter to the genre she is credited with inventing. 'There's something about it that just sticks with us and obsesses us.' Directed by Oliver Driver, the play compresses the summer of 1816 into one night and injects the supernatural into the period. As for how or what exactly, you'll have to watch it and see. Though, bringing the supernatural to Mary Shelley's life is not as much of a leap as you would probably think. Along with being disowned by her father and tragically losing several children, Shelley's life was surrounded by the mysterious, the weird and at times, the horrifying. Almost everyone surrounding Mary during the creation of Frankenstein died young, several not long after that summer, and this inspired a thought. 'What if they did something that summer … what if they did something that cursed them or marked them for death?' It seems a very natural extension of real life to speculate on. Legend says that the idea for Frankenstein came to Shelley in a dream. Her husband Percy Shelley was haunted by a doppelganger and premonitions of drowning. Mary learned to spell her name off her mother's tombstone (their names were the same) and is rumoured to have lost her virginity on her mother's grave. 'No one will ever be as goth as Mary Shelley,' says Sayer. The play starts its run at the ASB Waterfront Theatre from August 21. Check out how to listen to and follow The Detail here. You can also stay up-to-date by liking us on Facebook or following us on Twitter.
NZ Herald
09-08-2025
- Entertainment
- NZ Herald
Playwright Jess Sayer on Frankenstein's Mary Shelley and the creation of a monster
1816 was dubbed 'The Year Without a Summer' or 'Eighteen Hundred and Froze to Death' after the 1815 eruption of Mt Tambora in Indonesia triggered global cooling, crop failures and widespread famine. In Europe that year, 'summer' is dark and cold and awful. The Napoleonic wars have just devastated France and the young Mary Godwin – all heavy dresses and no rights – has just arrived in Geneva, Switzerland, with her lover (and future husband), Percy Bysshe Shelley. They spend the next three months frequenting the Villa Diodati with Mary's stepsister, Claire Clairmont, to visit the mad, bad and dangerous poet Lord George Byron and his personal physician, John Polidori. Olivia Tennet as Mary Shelley and Tom Clarke as the badly behaved great Romantic poet, Lord George Byron, in Auckland Theatre Company's "Mary: The Birth of Frankenstein". Photo / Andi Crown Because the weather is so awful – terrific thunderstorms and perpetual rain – this group of genius literati is trapped inside with nothing to do. They spend the dark days and nights imbibing, talking about the principles of life and galvanism (the 19th-century theory that electric currents could create life), reading poetry and scaring each other with ghost stories. Then Lord Byron sets a challenge: Let's all write a horror story of our own. Inspired, Mary comes up with the genesis of Frankenstein. Lord Byron and John Polidori focus on 'vampyres', leading to Polidori's The Vampyre – published in 1819 and considered to be the progenitor of the modern romantic vampire genre. By the time she attends this gathering, Mary has lived more than her years. Her mother (certified badass and proto-feminist Mary Wollstonecraft) died when Mary was around 11 days old, because we didn't know about germs and hand washing yet. So, Mary basically grew up thinking she'd killed her own mother. In a bold parenting move by dad (William Godwin, philosopher), she learned to spell and write her name using her mother's gravestone. Things only escalated from there – she fell in love with Shelley (a married poet) and got disowned because of it, ran away, lived abroad, was in dire financial straits and on the run from creditors, had a baby and lost a baby – all by the tender age of, let me repeat, 18. Having seen and felt so much of life, it's almost not surprising that when Lord Byron set his challenge, Mary Shelley responded with Frankenstein. It's a story about birth and creation; about rejection, being unmothered and unloved. A story that warns us about prejudice; warns us that we must create responsibly and take responsibility for those creations. Two hundred and nine years later, those warnings are as loud and urgent as ever. A 2012 edition of Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein", with Steampunk-inspired illustrations. Trying to condense all I've learned about Mary Shelley into a two-ish hour play has been a wild challenge, one I've baulked at more than once. How do you crush the life of a woman that brilliant into 104 pages? So Mary: The Birth of Frankenstein is a snapshot; a fragment. It reimagines that dark and stormy Geneva summer over one night, fusing fiction with a backbone of fact. It's about a young woman finding her voice in a time when women weren't supposed to have one. It's about creation, and how bloody and violent it can be. It's about rebellion and words and writers; about sexual politics and grief and motherhood. It's about a woman being furious and destructive, letting her rage and pain take physical form. Monsters are not born, Mary said. They are created. In this play, I've created a few ... I hope you come and see them let loose.
