In ‘Uncovered’ at PushPush Arts, women get lost, then found, in a good book

After playwright Laura King lost her partner in 2019, she found herself reading books – and realizing their power to emotionally heal. 

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Though it’s commonly accepted that people can get lost in a good book, the characters in playwright Laura King’s Uncovered: A Mostly Monologue Play About Women and Books, instead find themselves while reading classic literature.

A full production of the new play is on stage June 6 through June 8 at PushPush Arts in College Park, directed by the playwright. It was cultivated through SeedWorks, the theater’s development program, and funded by a grant from South Arts.

The play comes from a deeply personal place for King, who was widowed in 2019 and spent subsequent years doing a lot of reading while facing her grief.

“The monologues started springing from my own feelings while I was reading,” she said. “Then, I read a lot of women’s monologue plays, and they were all just speech after speech with nothing connecting them. I wanted to experiment with some connecting dialogue and movement so that bringing all the monologues together would tell a story.”

Attending a monthly book club meeting, a group of women volunteering at their local library explore the connections between their lives and the classic literature that they’re reading, such as Little Women, Peter Pan, Jane Eyre and Alice in Wonderland. The play consists mostly of monologues, each character finding connection to a particular work they’re presenting, but there is a framing narrative that brings them all together.

“They’re connecting to the books and stepping inside them as a way to deal with loss they’ve had in their lives and that sense of hopelessness,” King said. “It’s about the women coming together, trying to give each other hope again.”

There are seven women in the production, played by Jennifer Skura Boutell, Maria Cid, Elyse Davis, Kristina Jin, Katie King, Antonia LaChé and L.A. Winters. The monologues are inspired by a variety of works, including a cookbook. The characters all differ in their approaches and mind-sets, some more realistic and others more fantastic, but their sentiments are universal.

“It does split into different focal points, but to me there’s a central character: the woman who started the book club,” the playwright said. “She has the first monologue and works to unite the group by the end of the play.”

Familiarity with the titles will help the audience appreciate the books, but folks who haven’t read them will still be able to follow the material without CliffsNotes.

“The books are just used as a springboard for how the characters are feeling,” King said. “So there’s a phrase like the Peter Pan [monologue], for example. There’s a lot of repetition of the line ‘Never say never; never say never to Neverland.’ It’s about not giving up and staying adventuresome. And so I think the ideas are universal.”

Where & When
Uncovered: A Mostly Monologue Play About Women and Books is on stage at PushPush Arts June 6 through June 8. Tickets are $15.
3716 East Main St., Second floor

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Benjamin Carr is an ArtsATL editor-at-large who has contributed to the publication since 2019 and is a member of the American Theatre Critics Association, the Dramatists Guild, the Atlanta Press Club and the Horror Writers Association. His writing has been featured in podcasts for iHeartMedia, onstage as part of the Samuel French Off-Off Broadway Short Play Festival and online in The Guardian. His debut novel, Impacted, was published by The Story Plant.