Wednesday, August 17, 2005

Reporter and friend write play about Zelda Fitzgerald, other women of literature

Haley Wachdorf News-Bulletin Staff Writer; hwachdorf@news-bulletin.com

Albuquerque Every high school student has read F. Scott Fitzgerald's classic novel The Great Gatsby. But most people know little or nothing about Zelda Fitzgerald, Scott's wife, the woman to whom Gatsby is dedicated.

Brandy Slagle, who is a reporter for the Valencia County News-Bulletin and an Albuquerque playwright and actress, doesn't think that's fair. Zelda, after all, was a published author, talented painter and dancer in her own right, and there is reason to believe that some of her husband's most successful published works were plagiarized from her own to some degree. Yet Zelda Fitzgerald's work continues to languish in relative obscurity, and if she is remembered for anything, it is most often her turbulent relationship with Scott and her struggles with mental illness.

After beginning to delve into the world of women authors during college, Slagle and her friend Tifanie McQueen became convinced that Zelda's story wasn't uncommon. Rather, Slagle believes, there were many female artists of Zelda's time and before who were never adequately recognized for their talents simply because they were women.

"You just don't hear about them," she said. "In school, they teach you the work of the Ernest Hemingways and the F. Scott Fitzgeralds, but they don't teach the work of the women who wrote alongside them and were just as good, if not better, than them. We lamented how underappreciated they were."

But instead of just lamenting, Slagle and McQueen took action. They began reading everything they could find about the female contemporaries of literature's male heroes, researching their lives and work, trying to get an idea of who these women were, what they loved and how they contributed to the world of literature even while their voices were largely unheard.

The result is the first of what is intended to be a series of plays by the pair showcasing the life and work of four of these women. "Ladyslipper," is an original play by Slagle and McQueen about the life of Zelda Fitzgerald, which debuted at Sol Arts performance space in Albuquerque on Friday evening.

The four authors that Slage and McQueen chose to focus on are Zelda, American Dorothy Parker, French author Colette and poet Edna St. Vincent Millay, women who all lived in Paris at times in their lives and would likely have moved in the same social circles.

In ladyslipper, Zelda's life is chronicled, from her early marriage as a teenager to her slow slide into mental illness. Later plays in the series will focus on the other three women, but they are included in "ladyslipper."

"The other three women kind of come in and out of the play," Slagle said. "So there are times when only Zelda can see them, and there are times when they are actually there. As Zelda starts slipping more and more into dementia, those times start to really blur, and towards the end of the play, you don't really know which is which."

Among the tragedies of Zelda's life is the fact that she died in an Ashville, N.C., mental institution to which she was committed for what would probably now be considered a mild emotional disturbance, easily treated with medication.

"She died in a fire at a mental institution," Slagle said. "The title 'ladyslipper' comes from her death, because the way they knew it was her was because of a charred ballet slipper they found under her body. She had tried to get out of the institution and get Scott to send her home, because she felt like she was as cured as she was ever going to be. The doctors ended up going back and saying they didn't think she was ever really crazy. But they injected horse blood into her and did shock therapy for treatment, and the treatment made her crazy."

Although Zelda's marriage to Scott was a difficult one, Slagle said the main point of the play is not to degrade Scott or any of his fellow male authors, but simply to show that there was another perspective on the American literary history being made by men — the perspective of women.

"Zelda's side of the story needs to be told, too," she said. "That's doesn't mean her side was always right. But we've heard his side forever, and it's time to look at it from a different perspective. My hope is that people will hear something or see something in our play that will spark some curiosity in them to go off and start exploring this whole literary world that goes mostly untouched."

"Ladyslipper" will be performed at 8 p.m. on Friday and Saturday nights and 2 p.m. on Sunday afternoons from now until Sept. 4 at Sol Arts, 712 Central Avenue in Albuquerque. Tickets are $10 general admission and $8 for seniors. For reservations, call 244-0049.

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