Christine de Pizan’s City of Ladies

(A Staged Reading)
by Lorraine Liscio
directed by Myriam Cyr
featuring: Debra Wise

This is a free event, but you can reserve a ticket at the link below.

Paris 1418, three years after France’s defeat at Agincourt.   Writer Christine de Pizan has already achieved notoriety in France and elsewhere in Europe.  Now with her most important book, City of Ladies, she faces two obstacles:  the Chancellor of the Sorbonne and the Burgundy court. Not to mention another war.

Lorraine Liscio (playwright) is a member of Pulse Ensemble Theater in NYC. Her most recent play Moving Bodies introduces audiences to 18th-century physicist Emilie du Châtelet as she challenges her lover Voltaire, the French Academy of Science, and the laws of motion. Christine de Pizan and Emilie du Châtelet are but two fascinating women featured in Dr. Liscio’s book Paris and Her Remarkable Women whom she has brought to life on stage. (A brief Italian detour led to her one-act, Gono Superiore, a Milan comedy.) Before coming to playwriting, Dr. Liscio taught at Boston College in the English Department where she published articles on literary figures such as Toni Morrison, Marilynne Robinson, and Nadine Gordimer. During her tenure as Director of Women’s Studies she worked with music professor Jeremiah McGrann to program annual concerts of music by women throughout the ages. She is pleased to have her play about Christine de Pizan read at the Nora Theatre in tandem with the Boston exhibit of medieval manuscripts at the Gardner, Houghton Library, and Boston College. One of those manuscripts came from Christine’s pen.  

Myriam Cyr (director) is a poet Laureate, critically acclaimed writer and award winning actress who has turned her sights to directing. Last seen in New York as Julie Taymor’s princess in The Green Bird, Cyr currently developing a series of new plays including NPR and former editor in chief for The Atlantic Jack Beatty’s The Battle Not Begun, Munich 1938 and Michel Marc Bouchard’s The Divine: A Play for Sarah Bernhardt, originally produced at the Shaw Festival.  Artistic Director of The Black Box Lab (Hamilton, MA) she has recently directed Simon Says at the Culture Project in New York to critical acclaim. Her book Letters of a Portuguese Nun was named book of the Month for The Guardian and translated into 8 languages.  Myriam was a member of Steven Berkoff’s company at the Royal National Theatre under Richard Eyre and played Salome opposite Al Pacino.  She is currently producing Hedda Gabler for Universal Studios in a screenplay adaptation by Oscar and Tony award winner Christopher Hampton.   She will be directing two new musicals, Falling in Love with Mr. Dellamort by Jack Feldstien, produced by Fern Kershon and The Confession based on the New York Times bestselling novel by Beverly Lewis, book by Martha Bolton and Myriam Cyr, lyrics and music by Wally Nason for Blue Gates Musical in Nashville Tennessee.

This staged read of Christine de Pizan’s City of Ladies is a collaboration between The Nora Theatre Company and Black Box Lab at Stage 284. The reading is part of the That’s What She Said: A Feminine Perspective series.