Hyde Park Resident Composes Blue in the Right Way’s Women Beware Women

HYDE PARK – Hyde Park native Emma Ladij is the composer of Blue in the Right Way’s inaugural production, Women Beware Women, freely adapted by Kevin V. Smith and Daiva Bhandari, with Spanish translation by Sonia Perelló and directed by Smith, April 27 - May 12, at The Edge Theater, 5451 N. Broadway.Tickets are $20 - $40 and are available at BlueInTheRightWay.com.

Thomas Middleton’s 1621 psychosexual revenge tragedy tells the story of the devastating effects of the patriarchy on an entire society. A captivating and clever widow, Livia, orchestrates the futures of two young women and sets in motion a wicked game of subversion and deceit. But when the mastermind breaks with social convention herself, she finds out how far the men around her will go to constrict her autonomy. In this new queer feminist take, the lacerating personal narration of two surreal transfemme drag queens frames Middleton’s timeless tale, rushing it into the here and now. Smith and Bhandari’s original adaptation dives deep, excavating the social frameworks of gender violence and the gender of violence, as the story hurtles towards a devastating and outrageous new ending for our modern times.
Smith’s abstract, expressionist staging will feature elements of drag performance and modern dance. Driven by the company’s desire to make English-language theatre more accessible to Chicago's Spanish-speaking population, this masterpiece of early modern literature has been translated into Spanish for the first time. Each performance will be presented with Spanish supertitles, translated by Sonia Perelló.