From Photograph to Performance: Developing a New Play Inspired by Local History

by D.W. Gregory, Reading Theater Project

On Nov. 8, the Reading Theater Project will premiere my new play, Intimate Exposures, inspired by the work of Reading photographer William I. Goldman. Goldman famously photographed women working in one of Reading’s most successful high-end brothels. Many people in the area may already know his name — his work is anthologized in a volume edited by historian Robert Flynn Johnson: Working Girls: An American Brothel, 1892.

One of the questions often put to me by audience members is how a new play comes into being – particularly one that starts not with a story but an image. I’m always tempted to echo Geoffrey Rush in Shakespeare in Love and say: “It’s a mystery.” In reality, just about everything I write starts that way – with an indelible image of a moment in the life of a character. A moment that grabs my heart and won’t let go.

My most produced play, Radium Girls, began exactly that way – with the image in my mind of a young girl at a workbench, innocently pointing a paintbrush at her lips, all the while unaware that the paint contained a deadly poison. The image sparked a question: How could this happen? And that question fed the fire to write that play and see it through 30 drafts over three years. Radium Girls is now among the most produced plays in the country – and in fact, will be staged this month by Exeter Township Senior High School and in February at the Yocum Institute for Arts Education.

When the Reading Theater Project approached me about writing a new play inspired by Goldman’s work, I initially was skeptical. I will confess here to being a bit of a prude, and writing a play involving sex workers was not on my bucket list. But then I saw the photographs and changed my mind.

This one, in particular, grabbed my heart. Who is this lovely young woman, and how did she come to be working in Sal Shearer’s brothel? Gazing serenely at the camera, neatly dressed in a striped suit, with a very proper bow tie at her neck, she looks as if she’s just returned from church on a Sunday morning – or perhaps is about to go out again, to take a stroll in the park, or pay a visit to her mother.

You would never guess, from that photograph, what she did for a living.

Goldman’s entire collection is as surprising as this photograph. There are, of course, nudes in the collection – all artfully posed, some recreations of famous works (Botticelli’s Venus being one of them), the requisite erotica – more than a few stocking shots. But none could be described as pornographic. He looks upon subjects with an artist’s eye, and he captures not just their beauty, but their humanity. You can tell that Goldman liked these women – and they liked him.

But there really wasn’t any story to hang the play on. In contrast to Radium Girls – which is based on a 1928 court case – there was very little in the public record about Goldman or the brothel owner, Sal Shearer – and nothing at all about the women who worked for her.

From newspaper accounts and census records, we know that Goldman worked as a portrait photographer from about 1876 to his death in 1921, that he was a respected and well-liked figure in the community, active in numerous fraternal societies, and his name often appeared in reports of social events—weddings, parties, parades, grand balls. But why he took these photographs – and why he kept his collection a secret his entire life – is a matter of conjecture.

So how to get from an image to a play on its feet?

One thing we know about any play before it is ever written is that something will change in the course of it. Someone will be transformed in some way.

So, we began the process of development by meeting with members of RTP’s ensemble – actors, directors, literary manager, board members, and other interested parties. Over the course of about six months, we met periodically to talk about the photographs and what they said to us today, 135 years later, and to ruminate on the story we wanted to tell. Out of these discussions two words emerged as paramount: dignity and elevation.

We came away from our conversations with a strong sense that Goldman honored these women by taking their portraits. They were eager to pose for him – not only because he very likely paid them – but because the act of posing itself became a kind of liberation. Intimate Exposures, then, is an imagining of the impact this artistic collaboration had on Goldman and the women around him. How did they come to see themselves differently because they were worthy of that kind of attention?

Once we had a handle on the central question of the play – I set to work on drafting the script. It began with a few scenes that we explored on their feet – scenes with Goldman, Sal Shearer, and Edie Price, his favorite model. Then it was an eight-month process of working out a structure on paper – shuffling index cards is my most efficient method – then writing a series of drafts to refine the arc of the story and work in secondary characters and other elements, such as the political and economic environment of Reading at the time.

In the process of writing a few things became clear: Though the play takes place in 1892, it is no museum piece. The economic and political forces that shaped these characters are still with us today. As historian Ruth Rosen makes clear in The Lost Sisterhood, poverty and lack of education drove many girls into the trade. The same is true today. For many women who go into the sex trade – those who do so willingly – it’s because it pays better than anything else they could do.

While there is a movement afoot today to legalize prostitution and endow sex work with dignity and respect, we have to ask: Is it ever possible to separate sex work from exploitation when the driving force to join it is the lack of any better choice?

Reading Theater Project’s world premiere for Intimate Exposures is Friday, Nov. 8, starting at 7:30 p.m. at the WCR Center for the Arts, 140 N. 5th St., Reading. For more information and tickets, please visit readingtheaterproject.org or call 484-706-9719.

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