Undergoing treatment for “female hysteria,” Jane is confined to a room of yellow wallpaper, and her psychosis awakens a haunted prison.
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- Charlotte Perkins Gilman wrote The Yellow Wallpaper over 130 years ago, yet many audiences still find it disturbingly relevant. What aspects of Jane’s experience feel most contemporary to you?
What unfortunately feels so current is that, at its core, this is a story about a woman asking to be believed and is continually gaslit and denied support. This 19th-century woman asks to be believed about her own health, her body, her experience – and still in the 21st century we have movements like Me Too. The other thing that feels strikingly modern is the loneliness. Jane is cut off from community, purpose, and meaningful connection at the exact moment she needs them most. In many ways, loneliness has become a defining issue of our own time. From the collective loss of community we all experienced during the pandemic to the division and isolation bred by increased technology use.
- The story is often read as a critique of medical misogyny. Do you see the production as primarily historical, or does it also speak to the ways women’s pain and mental health are treated today?
When this story was written in 1892, the latest treatments for mental illness varied drastically between genders in America. Women were placed in solitary confinement under “The Rest Cure,” while men were sent on horseback riding camping trips with their buddies with “The West Cure” (seriously look it up!). It took another 101 years for US law to require medical trials to include women and people of color in clinical research. And now women are seeing our access to healthcare stripped away while we still fight for basic rights to bodily autonomy. Unfortunately, The Yellow Wallpaper does not only speak to the medical misogyny of its time. Every woman watching this show in 2026 will recognize on some level what the lead character Jane is going through.
- This adaptation uses contemporary dance alongside text and psychological horror. Were there moments where movement could express something about Jane’s descent that words simply couldn’t?
Absolutely. I am a firm believer that the body knows before the mind does, and that concept is what leads a lot of the choreographic language in the show. The women in the wallpaper are often a psychological and choreographic extension of Jane’s experience. Psychological gesture work helped me find a vocabulary of movement that really digs into the core shapes of grief, rage, desperation, and euphoria that the women experience in this story. Jane’s arc, while ultimately leading to destruction, is also a journey of liberation. Sometimes you have to burn it all down to escape and begin anew.
- The wallpaper itself becomes almost a character in the story. How did you approach bringing something so internal and symbolic to life on stage without losing its mystery?
This is where my incredible ensemble of actor/dancers comes into play. The ‘women of the wallpaper’ – as we like to call them – become not only representative of the wallpaper as a character, but also the spiritual history of the house. The spirits of the women who were confined to this space before Jane. And eventually the supernatural spirals further and further to the point where identities between the wallpaper, the women, and Jane become blurred. The mystery of this story is so much about what our protagonist tells you, what the ensemble shows you, and ultimately what the audience decides is real or not. That’s what really excites me about our interpretation of this story.
- One of the most unsettling aspects of the original story is that the people harming Jane genuinely believe they are helping her. Why do you think audiences continue to find that idea so frightening?
It is disturbing and difficult to face these ideas head on. From my own experience, I know how easy it is to fall into an abusive relationship. It can feel like an odorless gas leak—you don’t realize you’ve been poisoned until you wake up on the floor. Jane eventually hits that wall, realizing the person who has been “loving” her has also been manipulating her. John is deeply attached to the “good guy” complex, something I’ve witnessed firsthand in relationships with men in my life. Patriarchal expectations teach John to be an infallible leader, while Jane has been trained to shrink, apologize, and accommodate. John’s inability to hold himself accountable creates a damaging loop where Jane stops advocating for herself and John continues to mistake control for care.