Blue Lias, or the Fish Lizard’s Whore is Claudia Stevens’ newest one-person play, with music composed by Allen Shearer (winner, Prix de Rome), for Stevens’ performance as actor, keyboardist and singer. The play had its first reading during Stevens’ artist residency at Cornell University in fall, 2005. Its world premiere will take place on March 25, 2007 at the Zimmerli Museum of Art at Rutgers University, with subsequent productions in Virginia, North Carolina and Texas during spring, 2007. Presentation auspices include performing arts series, symposia on the history of science, and about the role of women in the sciences.
“Blue Lias” is set in the present within an imaginary convention of scientists. The audience is involved in the action, taking on the role of scientists at the convention who are being entertained by a play about the remarkable fossil hunter Mary Anning. In one of her most nuanced and dynamic performances, Stevens brings to life this colorful and unique figure of Victorian England, moving the action back and forth between the present and the nineteenth century. Her Anning is at once playful, wistful, sardonic and angry, waiting in the cloak room to receive a small honor while she reviews her life and times, the indignity of her position within the all-male scientific community, and the conflict emerging between science and religion.