Marie Kohler's BOSWELL Has Been Published By Dramatic Publishing 

Award-winning Wisconsin playwright Marie Kohler has announced that her play BOSWELL has just been published by Dramatic Publishing and is now available to individuals and theaters everywhere to produce. What began in an earlier iteration as BOSWELL DREAMS and produced by Milwaukee’s Renaissance Theaterworks, was later reworked into BOSWELL. The updated play went on to have a successful, critically acclaimed three-week run at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2019. It was at the Fringe that the play was scouted by Off-Broadway’s 59E59 Theaters, a company that specializes in premiering select Off-Broadway theatrical productions. Subsequently, in late-2022 BOSWELL was produced at 59E59 Theaters and enjoyed a sold-out run. Now the journey of BOSWELL continues with its recent publication by Dramatic Publishing.

The play is available to theaters, bookstores and individuals to purchase directly through Dramatic Publishing. The cost is $10.95 per digital script. To purchase the script and for additional details on cast size, streaming rights, the target audience and approximate running time, please visit the designated BOSWELL page on the Dramatic Publishing site.

BOSWELL is told through the eyes of a young female academic from the University of Chicago, who, in an unwelcoming era, struggles for her place in the driven, male, academic world. At her professor’s direction, she travels to Scotland for conventional literary research and ends up discovering long-hidden journals . . . and ultimately and unexpectedly, Joan responds to Boswell’s authentic voice. She makes a choice. . . . She also makes a friend.

Undergirding the play’s double stories is the idea of true friendship. There are two pairs of friends in the play: two men in the 1760s (James Boswell and literary giant, Samuel Johnson); and two women in the 1950s (Joan and The Lady Fiona, in whose Scottish attic Joan researches).

Play description: In this heartwarming story, American graduate student Joan journeys to a Scottish noblewoman’s estate in the 1950s to research writings of Samuel Johnson. Instead, she discovers the often-bawdy 1760s journals of James Boswell, long-hidden in the attic of his embarrassed family. Coaxed by her new friend, Joan pours over Boswell’s wild adventures in the Scottish Hebrides with his friend Samuel Johnson and moves towards a life of greater authenticity. Heart and mind spar wittily in this two-period dramedy about friendship, travel and the written word.

To learn more, please visit: mariekohler.com/boswell

In addition to the publication of BOSWELL, Kohler’s play MIDNIGHT AND MOLL FLANDERS is also scheduled to be published by Dramatic Publishing and will be available for purchase in mid-August 2024. For updates on that, as well as current updates on Kohler’s work, please visit: mariekohler.com or dramaticpublishing.com.

Kohler will join other noted Wisconsin playwrights whose work is also published through Dramatic Publishing: Alice Austen (GIRLS IN THE BOAT); James DeVita (THE AMAZING LEMONADE GIRL/AATE Distinguished Play Award) and UWM Professor Alvaro Saar Rios (LUCHADORA!). Please visit dramaticpublishing.com to learn more about their work as well as other playwrights published through Dramatic Publishing.