By combining literary and dramatic narrative with eye-witness accounts of Sasquatch encounters culled from the internet, The Securely Conferred, Vouchsafed Keepsakes of Maery S. reinvents
as many versions of the Frankenstein author Mary Shelley as there are
definitions of the word “Gothic.” In this work, a string of financial,
maternal, and familial misfortunes causes Shelley—referred to in this
production as Maery S.—to spawn a monstrous creative expression, which
takes on its own life and violent history. Maery cannot help but fall
in love with her Monster, only to see it “collected” and imprisoned by
charitable funding at a mandatory artists’ residency.
"Riveting...Kempson’s feminist politics are
provocative, as is the way the play’s structure enacts a central theme
of “Frankenstein” itself. Dr. Frankenstein created the monster, Shelley
created Frankenstein, and Kempson re-creates Shelley out of a mishmash
of details, some real, but many fictional."
