Adapting Glaspell’s Trifles for PMRP

Recently I finished my audio adaptation of Susan Glaspell’s one act play Trifles, for inclusion in PMRP’s Summer Mysteries this coming July. I’m really pleased with how it came out— it’s one of my all-time favorite pieces of theater, and a huge inspiration in my own approaches to feminist theater. It’s one of the most evocative depictions of how women’s work and interest are dismissed, and how damaging that is. You can see its influence in so much of my work, including Mrs. Hawking, as well as the Mrs. Hudson and Agatha Christie shows I previously wrote for PMRP. I’ve also taught it in a few classes, so I’d say I know it pretty well.

Still, despite this, I found adapting it more challenging than I expected. At least pieces of it. I wanted to maintain the shape and voice of it, though I wasn’t afraid to cut down or expand where necessary. The biggest trouble I had was how expository it was at the very beginning. It’s a short play that conforms to the Aristotalean unities of time and place, so it kind of starts with a long infodump by a minor character about what happened to kick off the scenario at an earlier point. I listened to a performance of the play and even as a fan of the piece, I found that section a bit of a slog.

The obvious solution was to write out the action of that moment as a scene, actively happening before the audience, which was what I planned on going with. But it gave me pause, because Trifles has an unseen character in it who the plot turns on other characters present having to interpret her. It’s a big plot point that some of the characters are equipped to do it accurately and some aren’t, and because of that, I feel like it’s extremely important that she never be present for the audience to interpret for themselves. But that means that a lot of that action in the exposition can’t be depicted, because she’s present for it. And that trouble stalled me for a long while.

I ultimately ended up splitting the difference. I decided to open with a scene that shows most of that event, while shifting away as soon as the unseen character enters the scene. It actually working well, and I find myself liking how the moment transitions to the moment being described. Feels much more active, much less expository. And for the rest of the script, I feel like I captured the power of the original while shaping it effectively for audio drama. It reads clean, and the additions I made feel like natural parts of the whole. I’m really pleased, though it was much tougher than I expected.

Hannah Baker is going to direct it, as I’m pretty busy this summer and I need to have others put on my work more often. (I can’t help it, I just really like having a hand in all parts of the process!) But Hannah is going to do a great job, and I’m very excited to see how it turns out.