The Beheading of Helene Gillet at The Rat NYC

In the shadows of 17th-century France, a young woman suffers a stillbirth, only to be branded a murderer. Who can she turn to for help when no one believes her? How can she fight back against the tyrannical patriarchy? The Beheading of Helene Gillet is inspired by true events— a chilling echo of today’s headlines. This high-octane world premiere play-with-music is packed with all the whimsy and charm of a public execution.

Book by Margaret Rose Caterisano 

Music and Lyrics by Jane Best, Elli Caterisano, David Pyfrom and Becky Brown

Directed by Jackson Paul Walker

Stage Managed by Tobie Goldberg

Music Directed by Jane Best

A note from the Playwright (Margaret Rose Caterisano): 

"I started writing The Beheading of Helene Gillet after the story turned up in one of my social media feeds.  It was shortly after the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe V. Wase and many of the conservative states quickly moved to make abortion illegal. In the wake of the wave of legislation meant to outlaw abortions, stories about women who suddenly found themselves in extraordinary reproductive situations without legal access to a life-saving abortion made the national news.  I couldn’t stop thinking about the parallels between Helene and a 10 year old rape victim from Ohio.  I had watched a television program in which the head of the Southern Baptist Association defended the state of Ohio for denying her an abortion. I was struck by the fact that women have been fighting this battle for literally hundreds of years; and that many times those decisions are still made by religious men.  

This version of Helene’s story has been pieced from several romantic accounts written in the early 1800s. The Romantics found Helene Gillet heroic and wrote in sympathetic terms about her struggle.  They wrote the nuns as allies, and gave Helene an unwavering faith that God would step in and save her from her accusers.  This piece leans into the notion that God did that, but suggests a version of God that the Romantics might not have either accepted or understood.  How does God talk to us? How does God help us?  How does God reassure us? How do we recognize the voice of God and is it pointless to speculate on it if it isn’t knowable?  Is it possible for little people can do big things if they aren’t worried about how impossible it is to do those big things?  The play is a call to action; an invitation to live your life in scorn of the consequences."

About Broomstick Theatre Co.: 

People over spectacle. Our work prioritizes every members’ artistic contributions and dissolves the conventional division of artists into separate areas of labor or specialization. We recognize that each of us brings valuable experience relating to every facet of performance and theatre-making and our production process makes room for all to contribute. We hope to set aside theatrical window dressing and aim beyond “beautifying” the stage. We instead strive to focus on the questions, challenges, and celebrations of our shared human experience.

Our Vision (the purpose of our theatre):

We believe our performances must have a clear purpose—an ever present and explicit reason for making them. 

Our productions exist to serve:

• Serve our community with affordable, accessible, and welcoming events.
• Serve voices, experiences, and perspectives that have been historically marginalized or oppressed by providing them with a platform and support.
• Serve our creative and artistic interests by providing outlets for the exploration of reflections, questions, conflicts, ideas, and images.
• Serve our fellow artists by giving us the means to support their theatrical interests, endeavors, and experimentations.

We share a vision for a theatre-making process that welcomes artists, recognizes their strengths, and supports their unique modes of self-expression. We wish to change the common practice of looking for artists’ limitations as reasoning for excluding them. We aspire to abandon the model of hiring and casting based on normative expectations or preconceived notions of what an actor, character, or any other artist should look like, sound like, speak like, move like, or think like. In fact, our work directly challenges the stereotypes and biases pervasive in the American theatre.