Ithaca College

On the Verge's production of TIS PITY SHE'S A WHORE will feature a cast of faculty members (Catherine Weidner and Greg Bostwick, Theatre Arts; Dan Breen, Paul Hansom and Michael Twomey, English); students (Will Champion, Anastasia Remoundos, Jelani Pitcher, Jordan Friend, Morgan Blanchard, Nicholas Byron, Alexandra Nicopoulos, Michael Trimm, Madeleine Stengel); and a local professional actor (Jacob White). It was directed by Claire Gleitman (English) and assistant directed by Danica Kelley.

John Ford’s TIS PITY SHE'S A WHORE, written in the early 1630s, bears striking similarities to ROMEO AND JULIET, with one notable exception. The star-crossed lovers in TIS PITY come not from warring families but from the same womb. Their passionate, incestuous love affair takes place in the context of a deeply corrupt society whose hallmarks are vicious materialism, misogyny and corruption. Given the ghastly alternatives that surround them, the lovers seem drawn to each other almost by necessity, and the audience may well feel prompted to sympathize with them--until matters go, as we anticipate they must, badly wrong. First performed late in the Jacobean period—when English drama had become notorious for its sensational, Quentin Tarantino-esque violence—TIS PITY veers back and forth between horror and giddy farce. At its heart, however, is a trenchant critique of the misogyny that is captured by its ironic title. In this “wretched, woeful woman’s tragedy,” it is a female’s fate to be venerated only until she is pronounced a whore, which occurs when she gives in to what the play recognizes as perfectly natural physical desires, shared by men and women alike.