PUTTING ON (AND TAKING OFF!) EMILY DICKINSON'S CLOTHES

By Rod Drown

It has been said that someone once surprised the "White Nun of Amherst", American poet Emily Dickinson (1830 -- 1886), sitting on a male knee in the parlour of her father's house in Amherst, Mass.

This vignette of Dickinson likely may not appear in long time New York Shakespearean actress Renee Bucciarelli's performance of William Luce's "The Belle of Amherst." However that does not mean that the play, which runs from May 10th to 21st at North Vancouver's Presentation House, is any less interesting or revealing. Written in 1976 for Julie Harris, "The Belle of Amherst" won Harris her fifth Tony Award as Best Actress for her portrayal of "The Myth", as Dickinson was called in her time.

Rumoured during her lifetime to dress in white for "effect", Emily Elizabeth Dickinson was, with Walt Whitman, one of the two foremost American poets of the 19th century. Her family was prominent in Amherst, her grandfather founding Amherst College where her father Edward and older brother Austin served as treasurers. After graduating from Amherst Academy in 1847 and attending nearby Mount Holyoke Female Seminary (now known as Mount Holyoke College) for one year, Dickinson returned home shaken by attempts to persuade her to join the Congregational church.

In the early 1860s Dickinson underwent a profound psychological and emotional disturbance. Whatever its source – some suggested a disappointment in love -- the crisis stirred her imagination and brought her to poetic maturity. During the years 1862-66 Dickinson wrote more than a third of her total output of eighteen hundred poems. Her poetic fame was strictly posthumous because, in April 1862 when she sought advice from popular critic and putative women's rights advocate Thomas Wentworth Higginson, he advised against publication. Her poems were too distant from the current style of the time, which was very florid – unlike hers, which was nothing if not terse. However, despite Higginson, she persevered.

By the late 1860s, Dickinson had become a recluse, dressing always in white. Apparently never leaving the family property, she became known as the "nun of Amherst." It is now asserted by literary scholars that her seclusion was deliberate -- a choice made to secure independence for her vocation: living out her inner life unflinchingly in tightly packed poems. It was not until 1955 that Dickenson's complete poems were published as she had written them. Her first poems were edited and "corrected" by Higginson.

Renne Bucciarelli as Emily Dickinson, Credit Paul Kuroda

Bucciarelli a fine performer, from Dickinson's locale
I expect Renee Bucciarelli's performance at Presentation House to be highly polished. Now a resident of New Westminster after leaving New York with her family following the 911 catastrophe, she has been extremely well regarded in her field. She has enjoyed the critical praise of The New York Times on past occasions for her work as a classical actor. When I saw her perform the role last year in New Westminster, I felt she shone in her portrayal of Dickinson. Costumed in her famous white dress (a historically accurate replica), "Miss Dickinson" ventured out of her mysterious and self-imposed Amherst seclusion to welcome audiences into her Victorian parlour for a little tea and black cake, town gossip and poetry—and to ultimately steal hearts while inspiring belief in the redemptive act of creation.

Like Dickinson, Renee Bucciarelli grew up in a small town in New England. During her twenty-year career in New York she performed extensively in classical and experimental theatre, including with Theatre for a New Audience, Julie Taymor, New Jersey Shakespeare, Hudson Valley Shakespeare, and the Kings County Shakespeare Company for which she was an Associate Artist for 17 years and Associate Artistic Director for four. While in New York, she received critical acclaim for her portrayal of the title role in John Webster's The Duchess of Malfi, and for the New York Fringe Festival world premiere of C.J. Hopkins' The Installation. She also got raves from The New York Times for her portrayals of Shakespeare's "Kate" (The Taming of the Shrew) and "Helena" (A Midsummer Night's Dream). Renée Bucciarelli currently serves as artistic director of City Stage New West (www.citystagenewwest.org) in New Westminster.

Recent Dickinson Resurgence
In recent years, Dickinson's quiet poetic inner light has once again begun to inspire new creations. Not just the subject of several newly-published books, the Muse of Amherst has also been the inspiration of at least three other Broadway plays, several novels, two children's books, one hundred eighty-six poems, plus countless dances, performances, and artworks. This reflective creation has not been confined to print. Dickinson's poems have inspired over 1600 musical settings, a Simon & Garfunkel song and, more recently, a chart-topping rock album by Italian singer/ex-supermodel Carla Bruni, wife of French President Sarkozy.

Carla Bruni not in Dickinson mode
Credit www.inoutstar.com

Connected by Shakespeare says Bucciarelli
When asked the reason for her attraction to Dickinson, Bucciarelli said, "First and foremost I am a lover of poetry--Shakespeare brought me to Emily! 'Shakespeare is my lexicon' she said. I love that, contrary to the cultural norm for her time, she was attracted to the outspoken (and often wicked) Shakespearean leading ladies like Cleopatra, Queen Margaret and Lady Macbeth, and felt kinship with Hamlet and Othello, to whom she chose to relate, interestingly, while living through the Civil War."

For the solo performer, says Bucciarelli, Dickinson's poetry constantly surprises. She finds it compacted with thought.

"Did you know," Bucciarelli asks, "[that Dickinson is] one of the few poets ever to use such extensive and specific references to the sciences? Also, her sharp New England wit and her observations on living in a small New England town is something I understand in my bones, having been transplanted during childhood to a small New England town still steeped in its Victorian past, and somewhat stand-offish to "outsiders"--which meant anyone who couldn't claim great grandparents there!"

To Renee Bucciarelli, the "White Nun of Amherst" understood the attempt to transcend gender, religion, and narrow-mindedness--and what it meant to be an outsider.

"Yet [Dickinson] loved intensely and embraced life in its fullest, finding redemption in her creative act. She constantly inspires me to do so! Working on this play re-fuels me as an artist, reminding me of why I love doing what I do, despite how daunting it can seem at times. As Emily said, 'My business is to sing. What does it matter if no one hears? Just to have been made alive is so chief a thing, all else inevitably adds. I find ecstasy iliving, the mere sense of living is joy enough...'".

The Incorruptible Necessity of Self-Expression
It appears to this writer that Dickinson's belief in the incorruptible necessity of self-expression is reflected in one of the poet's most famous works:


Disrobing Emily
One wonders who the above poem was addressed to. Was it retired Judge Otis P Lord, the friend of her father with whom she fell in love and who loved her in return? Renee Bucciarelli is of the opinion that the relationship was never consummated. Poets ask the deep questions and one of Dickinson's poetic successors, Billy Collins, has asked for all those who ever wondered: what would it have been like to have made love to Emily Dickinson:


Emily Dickinson for painters
Emily Dickinson's poetry has also influenced art. There is, for example, the Italian artist Alberto Mancini who has painted 30-40 works of art based on her poems.


And for singers and composers
Such as Simon & Garfunkel

In popular music, some of Simon & Garfunkel's songs – i.e. "For Emily, wherever I may find her" were influenced by or based on her life.


And British composer Simon Holt

As well, the British composer Simon Holt has done a five-part song cycle based on E.D.'s poetry, called A Ribbon of Time, which uses her poetry as its starting point. The work's initial two movements, first performed in 2001, take their titles from the poems "Blue – uncertain stumbling Buzz -" and "The Stillness in the Room," respectively.

Getting Emily Dressed
As part of preparing herself for the play, Bucciarelli made – from scratch – Dickinson's famous white dress. She spent about 300 hours on the project. Renee figured out how to make the dress, drawing up the pattern herself by using the image of Dickinson's dress printed on a poster put out by a library association. A long-time seamstress and an old hand at costumes, she crafted the garment on her grandmother's 1933 Singer sewing machine, mastering the intricate pleating, hand-smocking and other Victorian details.

Some months after making the garment, she visited the Emily Dickinson Museum in Amherst, Massachusetts. The trip to the Museum was somewhat nerve-wracking because the guide in the museum that day was not pleased to have a group (i.e. Renee and her daughters) with children in it. The biddy was worried about the children being disruptive or destructive to the Emily atmosphere. While in the shrine – i.e. Emily's room -- one of Renee's daughters pulled on her mother's coat, trying to get her attention because there, hanging in a glass display case, was the dress!

Beyond Emily When asked what roles she would love to do in the future, Renee chuckled and said "Anything that involves sharing the stage with another human being." She also mused about hoping to find time to write a project she'd envisioned a while back, which would involve performing parts of Hamlet while exploring a Victorian actress of the ilk of Sarah Bernhardt, who historically performed the role to mixed reception. "I think it would be interesting to explore a Victorian actress like Bernhardt dealing with the issues that every major Shakespearean character faces-- the "Now I am alone"-ness that Hamlet talks about, the inevitable discovery of the essence of what they are versus the way they are perceived by others. She was an amazing character and faced some incredible personal challenges. And I do love those inspirational types--like Emily Dickinson!"

Renée currently serves as artistic director of City Stage New West (www.citystagenewwest.org) in New Westminster, British Columbia. She is the director/Developer of The Shakespeare Playground, an outgrowth of the educational program she started at Kings County Shakespeare Company. Dubbed "the hottest" theater workshop for children by The New York Post in 2000, this program has served hundreds of public, private, and home-schooled children at the elementary, middle and secondary school levels on both Coasts. She is proud to be a teaching artist for Vancouver's Bard on the Beach.

She is a graduate cum laude of Wesleyan University, and the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center's National Theatre Institute. More information available at her website: http://www.fraj.com/renee