Program Notes

Letter from The Executive Director

Welcome to The Umbrella Stage Company’s 23/24 season.

With so much hard pandemic recovery work behind us, The Umbrella is thrilled to turn once again to a path of advancement, bold innovation and growth! This season’s Umbrella Stage Company experiences range from edgy rock to no-net improvisation to beloved musical comedy, while exciting new directions lie ahead in our concert and film series. 

We’ve also seen the expansion of our staff, and completed a new construction project to increase capacity for our popular Ceramics Studio and Arts Education classes for all ages.

During your visit, I hope you will be inspired to explore and come back for the many multidisciplinary offerings from our Arts Center. Spend time in our Visual Arts Galleries, admire three floors lined with work by our Studio Artists, register for an art class or workshop, inquire about youth birthday parties and art camps, return for a free family day or Winter Market, tour our outdoors public art installations, or become a volunteer!

Throughout the season, you’ll find us building partnerships to enhance your arts experience, whether in a town discovery tour or post-show talkback, Dinner–and-a-Show program or discount overnight with our hospitality partners, or a date night show with Kid-Care activities. Be sure to check our new, green digital playbills for special engagement activities and partner offers!

There are so many ways you can participate in the Arts at The Umbrella. We look forward to seeing more of you.

Enjoy the show!

Jerry Wedge
Executive Director
TheUmbrellaArts.org

Dramaturgy Notes

If you’re not familiar with the Borden family murders in 1892 (as most of us New Englanders are), it was the case of the century that shook the nation with gruesome and salacious details, leaving us today, wondering what actually happened. There’s even a nursery rhyme you may have grown up singing (“Lizzie Borden took an axe, gave her mother forty whacks…”). First of all, Abby Gray was step mother to Lizzie and Emma Borden, and she had nineteen blows to her skull, and Andrew Borden had ten from a hatchet. Lizzie was 32 and Emma was 41 when the Bordens were murdered. They all lived together with their 26 year old maid, Bridget, in a house with no electricity, no indoor plumbing, and they often ate spoiled food. Mr. Borden was very wealthy for the time, but extremely frugal with his money, and therefore disliked throughout the Fall River community. Lizzie and Bridget were the only people home when the murders were committed, and Lizzie was arrested and put on trial. Would a daughter kill her own father?

Lizzie was very active in the community. She taught Sunday school, and was a philanthropist and animal enthusiast. She left $30,000 to her local Animal Rescue League when she died. Surely a wealthy Christian woman of 5’3” couldn’t be capable of brutally murdering her father and stepmother with a hatchet on an ordinary Thursday afternoon? After all, women are the gentler sex…right? The fact that Lizzie was a woman, is arguably the reason she was acquitted and found not guilty for the murders, despite the overwhelming circumstantial evidence against her. The police found a bucket of bloody rags when they came to inspect the bodies, but after being told they were Lizzie’s menstrual rags, no further investigation ensued. Neighbor and friend Alice Russell told the jury that Lizzie burned a dress a few days after the murder because it was stained with red paint. Lizzie also attempted to purchase prussic acid (poison) from the pharmacist the day before the murders. The jury was composed of all white men who were in disbelief that a woman just over five feet would be capable of such forceful, brutal murders. There also was never a confirmed murder weapon, and no hard evidence that could convict Lizzie of the murders.

Was Lizzie Borden freeing herself and her sister from years of living in an oppressed and abusive home? Was Lizzie clever enough to murder Abby first, then her father, to ensure that she and Emma inherited his fortune? Did she use her female attributes to her advantage to receive sympathy from the jury and her religious community? Perhaps Lizzie Borden was stronger and smarter than everyone gave her credit for. Maybe she was innocent- that’s up to you to decide. 

Hannah Shihdanian, Assistant Director