SISTER SAILORS, Stories and Songs of Seafaring Wives
SISTER SAILORS, Stories, and Songs of the Sea is an epistolary play with a script inspired and composed almost entirely of letters by women who sailed on whaling ships with their Sea Captain husbands in the late 1800s.
Based on the true stories, SISTER SAILORS tells about these remarkable women and their often unique voyages: romantic moonlit nights on deck, debilitating seasickness, terrifying skirmishes with pirates, disease-bearing rats, and cockroaches as giant as a man’s slipper. And all the while living with the constant fear of gales, hurricanes, typhoons, collisions, and fire.
SISTER SAILORS interweaves first-person accounts from letters and journals with the lyrical narratives of sea chanties. The story focuses on the exchange of letters between two sisters, Essie, who joins her husband on a whaling ship, and Catherine, who stays home to care for their parents and the family store.
If you are interested in producing SISTER SAILORS, please get in touch with me for a selection of historical photos appropriate for this play.
