Susan McCully’s new play “All She Must Possess” — which will be presented at Howard Community College’s Rep Stage through Feb. 25 — is about the illustrious Cone sisters, Claribel and Etta, whose bequest to the Baltimore Museum of Art constitutes one of the most important collections of late 19th and early 20th century art ever amassed by citizen collectors.
But the play, whose main protagonists are the younger Cone sister, Etta, and a character called The Writer, is also an exploration of sexual identity.
The Writer, whom McCully may or may not have modeled on herself, functions both as a narrator, à la Thornton Wilder’s Stage Manager, and a Pirandello-esque seeker of her own story, even as she constructs a tale that will resonate with many a Charm City art lover.
An assistant professor of theater at the University of Maryland-Baltimore County who has written and performed in several feminist plays, McCully has lived in Baltimore for 18 years. “I fell in love with the city, how quirky and weird it is,” she says. “These sisters are part of that mystique.”
In some ways, McCully says, the Cone family followed the path of many Jewish immigrants to the United States, beginning with changing their name from Kahn.
“There’s something so compelling about that quintessentially Jewish-American story of going from peddlers to captains of industry in one generation,” she says. “And the sisters were able to create this collection because of that.”
Etta used money from her brother, intended to decorate the family’s drawing room, toward the purchase of her first piece of art. “Most people would have bought a nice settee or textiles,” McCully says. Instead, Etta chose Theodore Robinson’s “The Young Violinist,” an impressionist painting of a girl tuning her violin in dappled sunlight on a tree-lined garden path.
The sisters, whose fortune came from the manufacture of denim fabric in the post-Civil War South, are celebrated for their prescience, particularly when it came to Henri Matisse. Etta became a patron of the French artist, purchasing not only his work but works by other painters that underscore the evolution of styles and media spanning the turn of the last century. The Gauguins, Renoirs, Cezannes and even Picassos in the BMA’s Cone Collection, McCully says, “help to show where Matisse fits into the scope of art history.”
While many histories of the Cone sisters – “classic old maids,” as McCully wryly describes them – tell of Claribel’s achievements as one of the first female physicians in the U.S., and marvel at Etta’s savvy art collecting, they skirt a large part of the younger sister’s story — her intimate friendship with Gertrude Stein, the series of female travel companions she called her “nurses.”
“Clearly, she had relationships with these women,” says McCully. In the play, The Writer prods Etta to come out, repeatedly professing her love for the younger sister.
McCully’s motivation to write the play also grew from her own connection to Etta. Compared to the colorful and successful Claribel, Etta was more retiring and took care of their aging parents – a role common among younger sisters in Victorian families.
McCully says that, as a lesbian mother, she relates to Etta. “I wanted to tell the story of the overlooked woman who did all that emotional work,” she says.
The Writer, a contemporary character dressed in a hoodie and skinny jeans, sets out, like McCully, to tell a straightforward, historically accurate tale about the sisters, a story that would be at home on public television.
But Etta resists. “I would like to let my collection speak for itself,” she says. “Good day.”
The Writer persists. Scenes move from the sisters’ Baltimore apartment to an ocean liner, the Uffizi Gallery in Florence and Stein’s Paris salon.
Set designer Daniel Ettinger suggests these locations on a stark set with floors and furniture a grayed white gesso hue — yes, like a blank canvas. The 16-foot-high back wall is decorated with large empty frames, filled in various scenes with projections of artwork from the Cone Collection.
Perhaps the most important of the artworks that appear in the play are the paired images of Matisse’s two nudes – blue and pink. The “Blue Nude” is a large, reclining figure with shapely hips and blue-highlighted skin tones who gazes downward introspectively, even as her upper body is angled toward the viewer.
The painting was burned it in effigy after displayed at the International Exhibition of Modern Art at the Chicago Armory in 1913. But, as McCully points out, “In 2018, it looks quite tame.”
At the BMA, the 1907 painting hangs directly across the gallery from the artist’s 1935 “Large Reclining Nude” – a figure similarly prone, but even further removed from lifelike anatomy than her voluptuous counterpart.
The “Pink Nude,” as she is known, is flat against a blue checkered backdrop, one arm thrown behind her head, presaging the twisted paper cutout figures in the artist’s later work. She gazes easily from the canvas at the viewer.
McCully uses these two paintings to help frame Etta’s story. The “Blue Nude” comes to life in the play as Etta begins to express her true self, including her own sexual identity. In the course of the play, McCully explores the tensions between realism and expressionism, and Etta’s own blossoming.
“At the end, Matisse helps her to transform from the ‘Blue Nude,’ who’s internal, to this sort of transcendent, detached ‘Pink Nude,’” McCully explains.
“All She Must Possess” calls for five actors –- two play The Writer and Etta, with the others each taking on multiple roles, including Claribel, Stein, her partner Alice B. Toklas and brother Leo; and Matisse, along with his painting brought to life.
Joseph Ritsch, artistic director of Rep Stage, commissioned the play, and also directs. It’s part of the Women’s Voices Theater Festival.
Initially, The Writer was written to be a male, Ritsch says. However, after the play had been cast, but early in the process of staging it, McCully decided to change the gender to female.
Serendipitously, says Ritsch, the actor who had been cast to play The Writer announced that he had to bow out for another obligation, so the switch didn’t cause any hard feelings. McCully says that once she realized how important The Writer was to the plot — and to revealing Etta’s story — making her female “was a no-brainer.”
For information about “All She Must Possess,” repstage.org.
[JmoreImageGallery number=”1″]
In connection with the play, a new exhibition of historical women’s clothing from the era of the Cone sisters is now on display at Howard Community College’s Rouse Company Foundation Gallery. The exhibit also includes the historical clothing and photographs that inspired Julie Potter, costume designer for “All She Must Possess,” as she developed the costumes worn by the play’s actors. Accompanying the clothing are Potter’s original renderings of the costumes.
The exhibit runs through March 11 in the Rouse Gallery, which is located in the lobby of the Horowitz Visual and Performing Arts Center at HCC. It is free and open to the public. The gallery hours are Monday–Sunday, 10 a.m. to 9:30 p.m.
For information on the gallery and exhibit, visit howardcc.edu/galleries.
The exhibit was made possible by the Towson University Historic Clothing Collection and sponsored by the Towson University Department of Theatre Arts.
Martha Thomas is a Baltimore-based freelance writer.
Steve Hofstetter, who will perform at Soundstage next week, recently made headlines for his social media post ridiculing some fans' warnings about Charm City's safety.
Israeli-Americans Rachel Goldberg-Polin and Jon Polin talked about the pain of losing their 23-year-old son, who was kidnapped and later murdered in the Oct. 7th tragedy.
Rabbi David Wolpe looks at the recent interest in Hollywood productions about King David and why the story is resonating now.
Directed by Johanna Gruenhut, the production is based on of the 1998 novel and 2003 film of the same name.