Playwright/Actress Kate Hamill on The Light and The Dark – The Life and Times of Artemisia Gentileschi

Art, Rape, Feminism

Like the subject of this play, Kate Hamill cuts her own path with smart, highly inventive, female-centered work. “I was a feminist before I was in theater, the only 11 year old with a subscription to Ms Magazine.” She has a BFA in acting and surprisingly no training as a playwright. Ten years ago, Hamill bet her best friend $100 she could write a feminist classic and adapted Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility. The satire was a resounding success. Interpretations of other iconic novels followed.

Left: Kate Hamill courtesy of the author: Right: Self-Portrait as the Allegory of Painting (La Pittura) Artemisia Gentileschi 1638 (Public Domain)

The Light and The Dark – The Life and Times of Artemisia Gentileschi – veers from the tone of Hamill’s familiar oeuvre but not from her path.         

Artemisia Gentileschi (1593-1656) was the eldest child of painter/widower Orazio Gentileschi whose work was heavily influenced by Caravaggio. She pressed her father for lessons. Showing preternatural talent, the girl secretly started working with him. When she was 18, painter Agostino Tassi, who had access to the studio, raped the girl. Those who might’ve prevented it absented themselves having been bribed.

Joey Parsons, Kate Hamill, and Matthew Saldivar (Photo by James Leynse)

Hamill’s trajectory began when she learned one of her then collaborators was a “Me Too” abuser. She cut him off and began anti-harassment work with theater unions. It was so depressing an endeavor – few are accused, fewer punished, retaliating against survivors common – the playwright literally considered giving up her craft. Then, on a belated honeymoon August, 2022, at the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, Italy, she saw the painting Judith Slaying Holofernes by Artemisia Gentileschi, an artist just a name to her then.

The biblical scene represents Judith, called by God, killing the Assyrian general Holofernes in his sleep rather than letting him destroy the Jewish people.

Top: Judith Beheading Holfertnes by Caravaggio) Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike 4.0 International License Bottom: Judith Beheading Holfertnes by Artemisia Gentileschi (Public Domain)

“I stared up at it and I swear to you, I felt this woman say, ‘Snap out of it. You have a voice, so use that voice to tell the truth.’ From there I ordered something like 16 books…” including some on Caravaggio and the period. She even took a class in classical painting techniques. (Hamill painted a bit in college.)

The play opens with its young heroine in her father’s studio considering composition and perspective. Hamill’s accessible, accurate language illuminates throughout. Use of projected artworks is marvelously integrated. We get a sense of both her father and Tassi – who then abuses her.

Traumatized, the girl continued to submit to sexual relations because Tassi promised marriage, thus avoiding her ruin. Months later, Artemisia discovered he was already married. Despite Orazio’s friendship with her predator – there are stories Tassi was asked to tutor Artemisia – her father was forced to defend family honor by taking the abuser to court. Charges were not pressed for violating Artemisia. Rape was a crime against a family.

Later in life, Artemisia learned to read and write. Hamill poured over existing letters, among them one to a patron in which she declares, “I am a woman, but I have the heart and spirit of a man,” and several to a lover she took after her husband left her. “There’s a surprising amount of extant documentation for a woman of her era, including trial transcripts on which the play is very much based.” Some of the trial is reworked, some arrives verbatim, but the facts are all true.

Tassi’s testimony began, “I never touched her…” Sensing disbelief, he self corrected to “I had her, but every man had her.” The girl was tortured with a “sibille” (cords wrapped around the fingers and pulled tight) to verify her innocence. As torture increased, she’s recorded as turning to Tassi and saying: This is the ring that you give me and these are your promises. “To her father’s credit, he believed her,” Hamill comments, though Orazio was personally aggrieved at Tassi’s betrayal.

The playwright invents a young apprentice who influences the court. “I wanted to create one positive, male character, someone who does the right thing. I also thought it was interesting and useful that her story needed backing up.” The trial is dramatic, but not unrealistic.

Astonishingly, Artemisia not only retained the use of her wounded hands, but won the case, which exiled the perpetrator from Rome. His sentence was, of course, never carried out. “Tassi is the only one of these artists who has never disappointed me,” said Pope Innocent X whose dictate freed the rapist. Today’s news resonates.

Inevitably shamed despite the win, she was married off to an older man from whom she would part due to debt. She doubts herself in Hamill’s version, but regains ambition when provoked. Some of the script would sound relevant today. Artemisia was to be the only woman admitted to the academy of art in her new home of Florence. She additionally worked in Rome, Naples and finally London, England for the Medici, Philip IV of Spain, and King Charles I, while managing to support and travel with a daughter.

The painter frequently served as her own model both for practicality and marketing purposes.  She signed her work, but for years, it was attributed to her father. “Artemisia was a much better painter, more natural, dramatic. She was passionate, something that speaks to us today. Clearly it did to me. It brought me back. I don’t know I would’ve recaptured my spirit without her,” Hamill tells me.

Left: Self Portrait as a Lute Player (Public Domain); Right- Self-Portrait as St. Catherine of Alexandria (Public Domain) both 1615

Artemisia Gentileschi was a gifted, iconoclastic woman artist who pushed back against betrayal, violence, custom, and law to achieve her life’s work. She’s known for powerful portrayals of women depicted as rebellious, independent figures. “I paint them strong, I paint them angry! My women never weep! My prostitutes look like Madonnas and vice verse.” Out of 57 artworks, 94 percent feature women as protagonists or equal to men.  

Kate Hamill continues to work with the unions, finding solidarity in the effort. “It’s not up to me to finish the work, but it is to advance it.” Her next piece, Odyssey, will premiere at American Repertory Theater in Massachusetts in February. With any luck, it will then come into New York. Hamill plays Circe. It’s she who turns the soldiers into pigs.

Meanwhile, go see this play.

The Light and The Dark – The Life and Times of Artemisia Gentileschi
Written by and featuring Kate Hamill
Directed by Jade King Carroll

Through December 15, 2024
59E59 Theaters