Challenges Of Portraying Emily Dickinson in William Luce's Play "The Belle of Amherst."

I would like to begin by briefly sharing with you the happenstance by which I came to Dickinson. Then I want to identify seven challenges the actress feces in the portrayal of Emily Dickinson in William Luce's play The Belle of Amherst.

In 1983 I was cast in The Belle of Amherst, which was produced by The Maryland Arts Festival, a professional theatre company in Baltimore, Maryland. I researched for six months in preparation for the July production. The research included reading dozens of biographies, reading Dickinson's poetry, learning to play Moonlight Sonata on the piano (which I was to be playing when the curtain opened), and visiting Amherst for several days.

While waiting to tour Dickinson's home, the Homestead, I walked along Main Street and the fence of the Evergreens, Emily's brother Austin's house next door to the Homestead. I was told to "Move along girlie" by an extremely elderly woman on the Evergreens' property who assumed I was about to disturb her with a lot of questions. I assured her that I had no intention of bothering her. But it was she who initiated conversation, although to this day I do not know why. What I did not yet realize was that the conversation would drastically affect my life for the next decade. I told her that I was an actress from Baltimore, about to play Emily Dickinson. She started to volunteer a wealth of information about Emily and about Emily's niece, Martha Dickinson Bianchi. Out of nowhere she said, "Well, I suspect you want to walk along Emily's path don't you?" She gestured for me to come into the yard, and she walked with me along the path between the Evergreens, now her home, to the Homestead, in time for my tour. After my tour of the Homestead, I was told by the tour guide that Mrs. Hampson had sent a message that she "would receive me" next door. The guide looked at me as if I had accomplished some incredible feat and then asked me if I had any idea how rare this invitation was. I did not. According to the guide, Mrs. Hampson had inherited the Evergreens from the companion of Emily's niece, Alfred Hampson. The guide told me that few people had been permitted inside in many years.

My visit with Mrs. Hampson lasted several hours, and I returned for another visit several years later. I saw wine glasses and dishes that had been Emily's; I saw paintings of Austin's and toys of little Gilbert's. She told me dozens of stories about Emily, but her main agenda was for me to understand that it was Emily's niece, Martha, who was the real writer, and that Martha's was the real story to be told.

It is not appropriate for me to repeat that conversation here, but on the return trip to Baltimore I not only assimilated my research for the performance of Emily Dickinson, but I outlined, in my head, what I knew would be an historical novel on Martha Dickinson Bianchi. It took me five years to complete the research and write the novel and to fill in all of the missing links in the mystery that surrounded Dickinson's poems after her death. When the novel came out in 1989, I was invited to repeat my performance of The Belle of Amherst to coincide with the release of the book. This opportunity allowed me to revisit the play from a different perspective and to incorporate a great deal more information I now had about Dickinson into a revisited interpretation.

The performance of The Belle of Amherst is filled with exciting challenges. I would like to touch upon seven specific challenges that we discovered and addressed in our productions.

First: the play is an interwoven monologue that unapologetically flows from modern language to Dickinson's poetry. There are thirty poems in the play. One of the first challenges is to make the poetry a believable and natural part of Emily...