PLAYWRIGHT’S NOTES

Be sure to rehearse with a close approximation of the costumes you will be using (with the proper buttons and corsets) as the timing of dressing and undressing is all important when synchronizing with the dialogue. During simultaneous action, actors should never appear to be still or “waiting” for the other room to finish.

 

I am indebted to the book The Technology of Orgasm by Rachel P. Maines (The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999) for inspiration. Thanks to Luke Walden for putting me on to it. Another debt is due to AC/DC: The Savage Tale of the First Standards War by Tom McNichol (Jossey-Bass, 2006), for thoughts on electricity. Thanks to my husband for finding it for me. Asterisks in the manuscript indicate quotations from these historical sources. A final debt is due to A Social History of Wet Nursing in America: From Breast to Bottle by Janet Golden (Ohio State University Press, 2001) and Parallel Lives: Five Victorian Marriages by Phyllis Rose (Vintage Books, 1984).

 

Things that seem impossibly strange in the following play are all true—such as the Chattanooga vibrator—and the vagaries of wet-nursing. Things that seem commonplace are all my own invention.