written by:

Jennifer Schlueter

directed by:

Jennifer Schlueter & Sarah Ware

starring:

Emily Bach
Amanda Fox
Christina Ritter
Christopher Marlowe Roche
Kevin McClatchy

production stage manager:

Sherée L. Greco

animations & projection design by:

Vita Berezina-Blackburn

projections design & development by:

John Luna

scene design by:

Brad Steinmetz

costume design by:

Kristine Kearney

lighting design by:

Eric Elz and Sarah Lawler

sound design & composition by:

Caitlyn Trevor

additional modeling & animation by:

Alice Grischenko
Lakshika P. Udakandage
Jeremy Baker
Thomas Heban

Synopsis

Pearl Curran was a housewife in early twentieth century St Louis. She was also the operator of a Ouija board through which Patience Worth, a long-dead early British colonist and thwarted authoress, spoke. Over the course of two decades, a remarkably prolific Patience dictated (and, with the help of Pearl’s husband John, published) millions of words in books, poems, and plays through Pearl’s Ouija board and ultimately through Pearl’s own voice.

Over Pearl’s long career as a medium and lecturer, Patience regaled throngs of curious visitors, believers and nonbelievers alike, with cryptic, extemporaneous bon mots. Patience carried on a love affair with a local newspaper editor; Pearl demurred that she was merely the transporting vessel. Patience adopted a child; childless Pearl was delighted.

Plumbing the rich archival holdings of the Missouri History Museum Archives, Patience Worth explores fragmented identity, sublimated love affairs, a nagging desire for fame, and the limits of credulity.

About Patience Worth

In keeping with the for/word company’s creative technique, Patience Worth is built out of material written by and about its central characters, including Pearl Curran’s “Rosa Alvaro,” Irene Hickman’s I Knew Patience Worth, Emily Grant Hutchings’s Where Do We Go From Here?, Irving Litvag’s Singer in the Shadows, Walter Prince’s The Case of Patience Worth, William Marion Reedy’s “My Flirtation With Patience Worth,” Daniel B. Shea’s Patience of Pearl, Casper Yost’s Patience Worth: A Psychic Mystery, and the extensive Pearl Curran/Patience Worth collection at the Missouri History Museum Archives.

For more information on Pearl Curran, read Gioia Diliberto’s Smithsonian Magazine article.