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BLOOD BRIDES INTERVIEW WITH JESSE MARCHESE
Ellie Pyle (writer/director), Mary Chieffo (actor) and Jesse Marchese, resident dramaturg at Diversionary Theater and faculty member at the Old Globe and University of San Diego Shiley Graduate Theater Program, discuss the upcoming production of Blood Brides for Bard Fest at The Hobgoblin Playhouse in Hollywood.
J: I'm so happy to be here with you, both Ellie and Mary. I was lucky enough to see an open rehearsal of Blood Brides in San Diego when Mary was preparing for the Hollywood Fringe run and I just loved it. I was both intellectually stimulated and deeply moved by the play.
This piece shows us women who have been historically de-centered from their own stories to allow the men in their lives to take center stage. These are also women whose stories I think have primarily been told by men and have therefore maybe not been fully understood or even misinterpreted. It brilliantly weaves the stories of five towering female historic and literary characters: Lady Macbeth, both the real historical figure Gruoch and the character as she has been imagined by one Mr. William Shakespeare. We also have Bathsheba, the Israelite queen and wife of David, Igraine, the mother of King Arthur, and Clytemnestra, the vengeful queen of Greek mythology.
This play fully centers these women and goes so far as to remove at least the physical presence of those men who have historically dominated or taken center stage. This gives these women voice, which I think thereby gives them dignity and really is a defense of their humanity. It's a beautiful piece and I'm thrilled you're bringing it back for Bard Fest.
I'd love to ask some questions about the piece and its development. Ellie, I'm going to start with you.
What was the initial spark that inspired you to write this piece? Could you walk us through its conception and how the script evolved during development?
(Ellie in Blood Brides in 2007)
E: This was actually my MFA thesis. I wrote and performed this myself more years ago than I want to do math about right now. And it grew out of a lifelong obsession with Macbeth. I played Lady Macbeth for the first time at summer camp at age eight or something nonsense like that and just never looked back. But at the time that I was writing my thesis, I had just played Clytemnestra and I was in the process of directing an all-female version of Macbeth. So I kind of smashed those things together in my head and loved the similarities in these women's stories, particularly once you incorporate Gruoch. What all these women have in common is that they married their husband's murderer, because on one of the only things we know about the historical Lady Macbeth, Gruoch, is that her first husband was burned alive in his castle with fifty of his men and it was either Macbeth or Malcolm who did it. But what we know for sure is that her first husband had killed Macbeth's father. So it seems very plausible that, you know, there's a lot of room to write there.
The other inspiration for this, oddly enough, was tarot cards. That actually ended up being what my thesis was on, how you could use archetypes from the tarot in theatrical character analysis. So at that point, I needed four women because there are four queens in the deck and that was where I was looking at it from that archetypal, elemental perspective. Who could balance out this set?
J: I don't want to confuse our audience. You've been saying four women. I've been saying five women. I think because you're doing something really brilliant where you've involved both the historical figure that Lady Macbeth is based on and then the interpretation of her as Shakespeare wrote her, which leads me to my next question.
What did you discover from the tensions between the different historical and literary tellings of not just Lady Macbeth, but all of the women in these stories as they have been retold and refigured through history? And why did you think those tensions were stage worthy?
(Mary in Blood Brides in 2025)
E: I think of it as four and a half women because there are these past and present versions of Lady Macbeth who are also the fictional and historical versions. But there's a lot to discover in what's not in the text, but could be. Stuff like, of course, in Shakespeare, there are the couple lines Lady Macbeth has about having given birth to a child, but there is no child in sight. And we know that historically she did have a son. That son was Macbeth's heir. So what is the story that could exist between the history and the fiction? You know, if that child is gone now, where did that child go?
In the case of Bathsheba, I did a fair amount of reading between the lines, but I think it's a valid reading of her first husband Uriah. He would much rather be at war with all the men than home in bed with her. And why could that be? She doesn't have words with which to express that, but she definitely senses that there is something there that she doesn't know and that isn't what she expected marriage to be.
Igraine was the one who kind of gave me the most trouble in some ways because I think she's the one who's most similar to me, in the archetypes as I was looking at them then. But Mary helped me out a lot coming back to this, let’s say, 20 years later. I was able to do some work with Igraine that I was not prepared to do in my early 20s. Looking at her specifically as a mother and passing this legacy on to her daughters. Not just her place in this story because Igraine is one of the least looked at and talked about women in the Arthurian legend. People have written a lot of words to try and explain a version of how King Arthur was conceived that isn't rape. They have tried to. But Uther Pendragon was magically disguised as Igraine’s first husband and in most versions, she did not know who she was sleeping with. And so there was a lot to explore there in what happened when she found out. That’s something that we rarely get to see in those stories. And what impact did this have not only on her, but on her daughters who become a major part of these stories going forward.
J: Mary, I'm interested in hearing from you now about your history with this piece.
How long have you been developing these characters alongside Ellie and what has it been like to revisit the piece for last year's Hollywood Fringe and this year's upcoming Bard Fest?
M: I mean, one, I'm such a fangirl of this piece! Hearing y'all talk about it, I'm like, yeah, exactly! It’s so great! So I'm just sitting here delighted.
It’s funny, we're on Zoom now and one of the ways in which Ellie and I first bonded was during the shutdown, every Sunday for about 60 Sundays, Bespoke Plays hosted what we called Sequestered Sundays, where we would read different pieces from various members of our community across the globe. And at one point, Ellie sent me Blood Brides. We were thinking of maybe doing, you know, as we all were trying to figure out how to make Zoom work during the pandemic, maybe do something with different women playing each woman on screen. So that was when I was first introduced to this specific piece and I was so intrigued by it.
And then December 2024, we were spending some time together at Christmas and talking about various things and a separate solo show I'm thinking of developing. And then I think shortly after that, Ellie reached out and said, “What do you think about maybe for Hollywood Fringe this year you take on my solo piece?” And I was like, “Yes!” Again, these women, these archetypes! I feel very honored always to portray women like this, but specifically when they're written so beautifully, and as you've pointed out, with such a smart feminist lens as Ellie has, which is true in all of her writing.
So in January of 2025, we started reading through the piece together in Ellie’s living room. And we did some rewrites based off of conversations we were having about these women and their circumstances. I was learning more and more of the history because I was familiar with these women’s stories, but I did not know them, certainly not in the capacity I do now. It was great to get Ellie's insights about what she had learned in her process when she was originally writing the piece, how we were looking at it, again, through this 2025 lens.
Archetypes are such a huge part of this piece. And why I think Ellie and I do vibe very well artistically is that's a realm that we both really enjoy. Not only with the tarot queens, but the elements as well: water, fire, air, and earth. We explored how each of the women really embody one of them specifically. Lady M/Gruoch is fire, Igraine is air, Clytemnestra is earth, and Bathsheba is water. And that was huge for me in the physical and emotional development process. It's a highly intellectual, brilliant, historically-founded piece and it's also incredibly visceral. And I think that's a huge part of what we discovered in this version that we brought to Hollywood Fringe and now we're getting to recalibrate onto The Hobgoblin stage.
And there is this centerpiece of Lady M as a character. At the end of the day, that is the body that we're seeing on stage. It is Lady M moments after her sleepwalking scene and what happens in the time between that scene and “the Queen, my lord is dead.” As a big fan of Macbeth as well, it's fun to have the circumstances of that play hovering over the whole piece.
Something I'll also mention is the incorporation of the burgundy cloth. That is, to me, the other aspect of the piece that really helped me key in to the entire narrative. Finding the shape of each woman. In watching the piece, you'll see that each woman has a distinct way of wearing the cloth that reminds us of their historical environment and overall energy.
E: I recommend that every writer who occasionally performs their own work should see someone else do it at some point. And in fact, I usually recommend that they do that first before they perform it themselves. It's always strange and tricky to pass off something like this that you wrote for yourself to perform to somebody else, but I would be happy for Mary to perform anything I ever wrote ever. And she's a much more physical actress than I am. So that was really cool to find all these things that she discovered in the staging and physicality and all of the many things this cloth could be. Which I do have to credit one of my graduate advisors, Dennis Elkins, with the cloth concept. That was something that he introduced into this, but Mary has taken it to a whole other level in terms of how she really gives this fabric its own character as it kind of moves through the space. It's stunning.
M: Thank you. And I'll add on with the cloth aspect is the way in which Ellie has also created this ritual within the piece. I remember actually, Jesse, when you came to see the rehearsal run, when we talked afterwards, we were all speaking to how you feel like you're a part of this larger, beautiful ritual while watching it. And I feel like the cloth really allows that. I feel the energies of these women in that cloth. And that was a wonderful discovery when I really let it be its own living character in the play.
J: Yes, it really does feel like a ritual. It's a beautiful, beautiful physical production with a really restrained visual style, largely marked by the figure of Mary and that beautiful white dress. And of course, the creative use of the cloth that you’ve talked about.
How did you discover that physical vocabulary, that theatrical language? Was it baked into the writing? Was it something you found along the way as you were staging it, or a mix of both?
M: I appreciate what Ellie said earlier. I do pride myself in being a very physical actor. I mean, that's my key. I love to explore the text physically. When I'm memorizing, I need to find the physical version of the words. And then when I'm lucky enough to do a piece like this, I don't have to let go of most of that embodiment. When I speak to how much I love performing Shakespeare, it's Shakespeare and Ellie Pyle. It is, you just get to sink your teeth into these words. And I think that they, the images that are provoked by her words, they just sink into my body. I think that's also why the piece, I am able to memorize all 17 pages of it, because it is so innately visceral. There's a real purpose and quality to the words and the stories that — obviously lots of rehearsal, lots of drilling, lots of all that stuff — but once it's there, there's something really innate.
What I have discovered with Clytemnestra on a physical level is that, you know, she's earth. She’s this lioness. She is so in her body and such a protector. And getting to find her physicality versus Igraine who is much more still, much more air. We talked too about her being warm air or cold air. There are moments where she's warm with her children and ice cold with Pendragon. And Bathsheba as the bubbling water is so fun. We joke too, Bathsheba is the one that anyone who knows me in real life is like, “I think that's Mary!” The young, naive, trusting, wanting to be good and do good. But Clytemnestra is who I aspire to be.
E: In terms of things that were already in the script. Pretty much there's a bed, a bathtub, and a table, and then the cloth that we've been talking about that's used to differentiate between the characters. And then the only props go back to that original tarot inspiration — we have a candle, we have a blade, we have a coin, and we have a chalice or grail. In the original version of it, I kept those objects very much to the women they were associated with, except for, of course, the dagger which travels around to all of them. But Mary found a bunch of really cool moments to blur those lines.
I love collaborating with Mary because it's such a perfect combination of us thinking so similarly, and yet so differently at the same time that we're constantly surprising each other with, “Oh, that's so cool! Let’s take that and run with it.”
J: The play really is a tour de force for Mary, allowing you to play these multiple women through the eyes of Lady Macbeth. It challenges the audience and keeps us on our toes to follow these quicksilver mercurial shifts between characters.
How did you, Ellie, decide to interlock those stories in the way in which you weave them? What was the power in doing that, and also removing the men? They're very much in the scene, but because there's no physical presence we are forced just to focus on the women. What do you think that does?
E: We’ve seen the men's version of most of these stories. You don't need to see the men, because you can fill those gaps in yourself, and Mary does such a beautiful job of never being alone on that stage. Her scene partners are always very, very present. And that is something that she approaches with an enormous amount of very specific craft. She is very particular and consistent in how she brings that reality to the audience.
But in terms of interweaving the pieces. The play really hits the the high points of all of these women's stories with none of the downtime and so the only way to find a balance in that is in the juxtaposition of these moments with each other. If you're going from an incredibly intense and devastating Clytemnestra moment, is there humor to be found in Bathsheba’s awareness or lack thereof of her own circumstances? I tried to find the moments where they're using humor as a defense mechanism, or where it's the irony of the audience knowing something that they don't. And finding a flow in that so it's not murder and abuse all of the time.
J: For me as an audience member, by weaving these stories together by physically removing the men, even though they're present, we're forced just to focus on these women in their moment to moment actions, their tactics, the negotiations they have to make with a very difficult male-dominated world.
And you mentioned, it's not just all murder and abuse. I think these stories have become sensationalized and the telling, it's all about what's done to these women and what these women do in turn to other people.
But the play reminded me these are human beings, these are women living in very difficult times under very different, very difficult limitations and power structures, and for me it really shows how they find agency in the ways they can to navigate their own survival and the survival of their offspring in a beautiful moment to moment way. It's deeply humanizing.
E: Because despite their circumstances, none of these women are victims. And so that becomes the dramatic question: How do they make all of this in service of something and find that agency and purpose. In these stories often they are basically props. Nobody is going to think of Lady Macbeth that way at first glance, and I think that is part of the reason that she is the one who's channeling. She is the one who is able to bring the enormous amount of agency that she has shown. Giving voice to maybe what was lost in the rest of them. And, though even in her case, one of the things that's so fascinating is she does fall apart in the end. And it is this last grasp that we see in her final moments of finding meaning in it all.
M: I mean, it is her arc. Working on the piece, I was like, “Okay I'm doing the final arc of Lady M in Macbeth!” And to me just thinking about her journey in the play. I played Macbeth in the version I worked on in the past so then I got to take on Lady M's perspective. But what I found in that previous version and in my continued exploration of Shakespeare's work is that the Macbeths had one of the most loving relationships. There is, I like to believe, real love — that they found each other, they had real chemistry, which we get to see with some of the Gruoch flashbacks. I love that her relationship with Macbeth is her first moment of feeling seen and respected and loved and that the real tragedy is that she loses Macbeth, I think, to toxic masculinity.
E: Absolutely. The fact that, as you said so beautifully, she found this true love who really empowered her, and now she's lost that. He’s retreated into himself. Something that's so clear from the text is that she starts sleepwalking when he's not in that bed anymore. Since he went out into the field. She's trying to reckon with all of these things that she hasn't had to reckon with for a long time, and really calls on the spirits of these other women to help her through that.
J: These women are from a long time ago, what about their stories resonates now and what do you hope audiences take away from the piece at Bard Fest?
E: I think there are a lot of universal themes in this, and I am someone who personally does not think victimhood is built into womanhood.
I think that we all face circumstances and we all decide how to deal with them but I think that particularly in this modern world where there is so much going on that we all feel is beyond our control and really wish wasn't happening, this piece is a look at, “Okay, what are the different coping mechanisms?” Not to say that any of these stories are necessarily a healthy way to approach things. But it's a story of survival, all of these women survive. And even though the wars we are facing now are very different than the ones they were facing then it's still that question of how do you survive. What does it serve, and what do you leave behind?
M: Well said. Definitely seconding all of that.
I have been so grateful as a woman — as a six-foot-tall female body — to be allowed to be all that I am on stage. To be sweaty! Step aside Jonathan Groff! I joke, but truly. To me, theater is an athletic endeavor. It's a sport, and that's what I love about it. I want to walk away from a performance feeling like I just like ran a marathon, and I definitely do in this piece.
I think it's important that we see women allowed to be, and I use this term in reference to a book that I really love — a collection of essays called Women and Other Monsters, which explores different female stereotypes through archetypes. Jess Zimmerman who wrote it looks at all these different female monsters from Greek mythology specifically. The one that got me hooked was the one about Medusa and the idea of “ugliness.” And what she really speaks to in the essay is that we need to embrace what “ugliness” is. It’s about not being forced into that tiny little button pin of what “beauty” is, it's about being all that you are. And that's been a huge inspiration for me as a performer and artist overall, and with the work that I want to put out there. And this piece allows me to do that in the most incredible way.
We are experiencing these women but it goes beyond gender. It is a human experience that I'm just so honored and grateful to get to embody. I think that’s why we love these archetypes. The reason that they're archetypes is they speak to us throughout time. And when I'm embodying them, I'm learning more and more about myself. Every day I get to work on this text, I'm discovering new aspects and reflecting on who I am.
Women should be allowed to be messy and allowed to be angry. I am reading through Patsy Rodenberg's The Woman's Voice right now and I was texting Ellie about it the other day because she speaks specifically on the Greeks and Shakespeare, and how the women in those stories are allowed to have this divine feminine rage that we're so not often allowed in everyday life.
E: Though I will also say, I think one of the cool things about the different archetypes in this piece is that they are different.
M: Yes.
E: They are not all rageful, at least not how we would understand it. You’ve got hot burning rage, you've got cold burning rage but then also there are other approaches these women take. I think that in a world where “strong female character” has become something that people have such specific ideas about sometimes in a very narrow scope, this piece is a chance to find something relatable in all four of these women, and they're different ways of navigating their circumstances. That rage isn't the only way to be strong.
M: Yes.
J: Yes, these women contain multitudes. Mary you talked about the small circumference in which we consider beauty and at the same time that can be said for femininity and women. This play reminds us that women, people, do and always have contained multitudes.
Blood Brides Performances at Bard Fest
Thursday, April 30 at 7:00pm
Saturday, May 2 at 3:30pm PST (live stream available!)
Sunday, May 3 at 8:00pm
The Hobgoblin Playhouse
1516 N Gardner St, Los Angeles, CA 90046
Run Time: 50 minutes
Tickets: $20 with discount code INTERVIEW
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