Ever wonder what goes on in the mind of a playwright?
Our Author Insights series features personal essays from playwrights, offering a behind-the-scenes look at the ideas and experiences that shaped their work.
Below, read “Writing The Women in Theatre Project”, where writer Ed Levy reflects on Trifles. You can also download a free PDF that pairs the essay with short, classroom-ready activities for students.
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Standing on Her Shoulders: Adapting Susan Glaspell's Trifles
Ed Levy
I love Susan Glaspell's play Trifles. That is the best reason I can think of for wanting to adapt it. It speaks to the issue that is the closest to my heart, human connection. The evolution of the bond between Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters, born of compassion, rings true to me. And it is a gripping murder mystery, all accomplished in twenty minutes.
Trifles raises so many issues that I hope you will engage with in your study and performance of it.
- What should a wife or partner do when confronted with abuse?
- How much has really changed between husbands and wives, given how persistent domestic violence remains?
- What is the impact of social isolation?
- What was life like in the American Midwest in the early twentieth century, and how does that compare to our life now?
It also raises a host of questions about adaptation.
Glaspell herself explored this material in many forms. First, she covered the murder as a reporter in newspaper articles that appeared as the trial progressed. Then she wrote it as a short story, "A Jury of Her Peers." Finally, she wrote it as a play. I'm just the latest in a chain of adaptations that Glaspell herself started.
Since its original production at the Provincetown Playhouse in 1916 and on Broadway, it's been produced countless times, especially on college campuses and in community theaters. People have adapted it in film and opera.
Why would I choose to adapt a pre-existing work of art? To me, the best answer is that I love it. It is a special way of paying tribute to it and participating in it. It is a wonderful opportunity to be part of a beautiful and meaningful work of art. It also gives me the leg up that Sir Isaac Newton spoke of when he said, "We stand on the shoulders of giants."
So what did I actually do while adapting Trifles as a musical? My initial choice was to make this the women's play. In Glaspell's original, three men move through the kitchen—the Sheriff, the County Attorney, and a neighboring farmer, Mr. Hale—and their dismissive presence shapes much of the rhythm of the piece. I cut the County Attorney entirely and minimized the time spent on the Sheriff and Mr. Hale, freeing the stage—and the score—to belong to Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters. With that room reclaimed, I used song to do what stage directions and silence do in the play: open the women's interior lives. Music let me follow what each woman is privately thinking and feeling as she pieces the truth together—her memories of Minnie Wright, her recognition of her own marriage in Minnie's, the moral weight of what they are about to decide. The result, I hope, is that by the time the canary is found, the audience has been inside both women long enough that the choice they make together feels inevitable.
Adapting Trifles as a musical adds layers of rhythm, pitch, timbre, and structure that our brains and bodies process as emotion, not just information. Those musical layers can carry nuance, intensity, and even kinds of meaning that are impossible to put into words. My love language is song.
Composer Alexander Craven says, "In writing the melodies for this piece, I endeavored not just to set the lyrics based on the rhythms, stresses, and inflections of the words, but also to imbue the melodic lines with a certain yearning and memorability (chiefly through the use of repeating motifs) that will hopefully stick with the audience even after they've left the theater. The chords underneath and the figurations thereof were suggested to me by the oppressive darkness of the setting and the profound complexities of the women's internal lives. Simple diatonic triads didn't suffice, at least in my estimation, in expressing those two key aspects of this story, hence the extended chords and modal interchange."
Most importantly for you and me, you can participate in it by performing it. A musical only truly comes to life in performance. What could be a more active way of participating in a musical than acting and singing it? Trifles asks whether women can see what men miss; in this musical, the answer is something they get to sing together. I hope that in performing it, you will get some of the thrill of participating in it that I got from writing it. I wish I could see you sing and act it. Please send Gitelman & Good a picture so I can see you in it!
