Esme’s Last Séance: A Review
The Plays and Players Theater in south Philly was the perfect venue for a play such as this; the intimate setting almost makes you feel as if you’re a part of the action. Admittedly, it has been a while since I patronized any theater whatsoever. In fact, I’m struggling to remember the last time I saw a live play. That’s one reason why I appreciated ‘Esme’s Last Séance’ — it highlights the power of live performance. There’s something about it that is simply not replicated when we watch people performing on screens.
An interesting note on the playbill from playwright Evelyn Richardson asks questions that I have been grappling with within my artistic practice:
Is there another world beyond our own? Can we make contact with those who have left us … Have we any choice, or hope at all, to grasp eternity?
Because of my own foray into the occult I believe I have been closing in on some interesting responses to these questions, but I’ll save that for towards the end of this review. First I’d like to talk about the performance upon which this entire play hinges, Sarah Billings as Ms. Esme Gordon. In the play, Esme is desperate to contact a lover who has crossed over. Without giving too much away, let’s just say that near the beginning some of Esme’s questions are definitively answered, and this shapes our perceptions as the action unfolds. Billings essentially carries the play with her stage presence and commitment to the material. She truly conveys the essence of being an outsider who must learn to trust the strength of their own convictions and experiences.
The dramatic ending, which could have very easily come off as campy, was elevated above that by Billings’ commitment to the role and material that never wavered throughout. The supporting characters, most of whom are members of an occult society, are well fleshed out and conceived. The performance I witnessed was the last one, but I hope it gets picked up elsewhere.
One of the more interesting plot devices concerns action that happens offstage. The rowdy musician neighbors of the occult society are causing a ruckus and this is something that adds to the tension of whether or not we as audience members will witness a successful séance and Esme’s vindication. What we see by the end of the play however is that the old saying is true — a prophet is not accepted in their own hometown. Each participant in this séance is frustrated in their own way by their lack of ability to definitively answer the question of whether or not it’s possible to communicate with those who have passed on. When one of them claims to have pierced the veil, they are immediately excommunicated and ejected.
The occult occurrences that take place in this play towards the beginning and at the end were an interesting conceptual choice. The fact that one of these occurrences amounts to an intervention that literally saves the life of the main character was quite touching. It gave me chills because one aspect of life that I’ve been grappling with is that our ancestors can and do intervene; this aspect of life is real. The problem is that thanks to Christianity, the era of settler colonialism and organized religion in general we don’t have much of a roadmap for how to engage with the occult, the esoteric, and things that we know are there but that are unseen.
It might be helpful if I explain my own perspective on occult phenomenon as it relates to my own research and artistic practice. It concerns how we know what we know. The development of germ theory is a good example of how for endless years human beings were under the influence of things that were unseen yet very real. We simply did not develop the technology to see and understand bacteria, viruses and the microbial world until the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Before this proof was incontrovertible, anyone who contradicted the dominant orthodoxy of what caused illnesses risked ridicule, exclusion, or even death. One thing that has dawned on me, especially through my interaction with the Dresden Mayan Codex, is that Indigenous cultures that were denigrated as superstitious or demonic were in fact utilizing a kind of technology that remains inscrutable to us. And it remains inscrutable because almost anything that could have contradicted the Catholic or Protestant church was destroyed.
On this theme, a word about one of the props used in the play and how it intersects with my own work. I was particularly struck by how the book prop was used as a method of communication / manifestation with the spirit world. The role of books in my artistic practice can’t be understated, and I’ve come to view certain books and written records as an important method of intercepting these discrete, personal messages that can come to us in dreams or via synchronicities. The WWII diaries of Victor Klemperer are powerful and are literally containers for people and perspectives that we otherwise would know nothing about. Klemperer is for sure someone whose work opens up an entire world for us. He’s another example of a perspective whose time has come.
I see ‘Esme’s Last Séance ’ as part of the emergence of alternative perspectives that are very necessary right now. The queer identity of the playwright is not insignificant. Historically, here on this continent before the era of colonization, queer people were generally viewed as interlocutors between the extremes of various spectrums; those who are now called LGBTQI+ were those who helped their societies find balance. Those who were called Two Spirit were particularly known for their spiritual gifts. A post I saw recently on Instagram highlighted for me how as queer people, the denial of our specialness and our magic is part and parcel of our oppression. Mainstream society wants to normalize queerness as much as possible; for them the goal is LGBTQI+ cops, soldiers, greedy landlords and Wall Street executives. But we were meant to be so much more than that as this play intimates.
