Claudia Stevens, playwright and performer, will perform Blue Lias, or The Fish Lizard’s Whore, at Scripps College’s Garrison Theater as part of the Alexa Fullerton Hampton Speaker Series on Thursday, March 5, at 7:30 p.m. The event is free and open to the public.
Creator of unique and complex interdisciplinary pieces, Stevens prides herself on her solo performances as a musician-actor. Her plays encompass themes ranging from crime and art to hate crimes and reconciliation, drawing heavily from literature, history, and issues of identity.
Her recent work, “Blue Lias,” written in 2005 with music composed by Allen Shearer, is set in the present at an imaginary convention of geologists. The audience is involved in the action, taking on the role of scientists at the convention being entertained by a play about fossil hunter Mary Anning. In one of her most nuanced and dynamic performances, Stevens brings to life this colorful and unique figure of Victorian England, moving the action back and forth between the present and the 19th century. Her Anning is at once playful, wistful, sardonic and angry, waiting in the cloak room to receive a small honor while she reviews her life and times, the indignity of her position within the all-male scientific community, and—religious herself—the emerging conflict between science and religion. Stevens also portrays Anning’s nemesis, the eccentric, humorously self-important William Buckland, who often helped himself to her work. A clergyman as well as an Oxford geologist, Buckland tried hard to reconcile scientific discoveries with literal biblical accounts. Through music, dramatic performance, letters and impressions by contemporaries, and enchanting visual representations of fossil dinosaurs, coupled with Allen Shearer’s imaginative musical score, Stevens enriches her depiction of complex, expressive, and significant characters and issues in the history of science.
The Alexa Fullerton Hampton Speaker Series brings a broad range of renowned presenters and artists to Scripps College to share their unique voice and vision with students, faculty, staff, alumnae, and the greater Claremont community. The goal of the series is to enlighten and inspire the audience as well as expose them to new ideas and perspectives.
For more information, please call the Malott Commons at (909) 607-9372.