

Ashford, after which she settles on that anything will prevent her to become a top-grade scholar and that her selected sphere of research will be one of the most difficult, the poetry of John Donne. What the spectators watch is what Vivian herself observes, and so actuality is twisted in accordance to her understanding.Īs Vivian experiences a sequence of tests and procedures in the disinfected clinic surroundings, she takes the watchers back twenty years to a stumble upon with her school tutor, E.M. Vivian takes the spectators to different views in the earlier period and her current life that enlightens her attainments in the world of education and reveal what ensues to her as she is treated with violent chemotherapy for eight months. Before her hospitalization, she was Professor Bearing, educator and intellectual, focusing on the Holy Sonnets of John Donne. “The Faerie Queene this is not,” she recommends, alluding to Edmund Spenser’s verses, a tribute to the glory of Queen Elizabeth and her assets. Wit starts with Vivian addressing the watchers: she is presently a patient in a central research clinic undergoing curing for sophisticated ovarian cancer, and she realizes that the prognosis is not consolatory.

The play shifted to the Union Square Theater in December 1998, after its triumphant initial run in New York City. She also integrated her own life practice into her work on the performance, comprising the final decease and death of her brother Alan Palmer from cancer. Chalfant got strong admire for her recital. An extract from the play was issued in the New York Times in September 1998. The play got its first New York City performance in September 1998, at the MCC Theater, with Chalfant performance as Vivian Bearing. Wit obtained its world premiere at South Coast Repertory, California, in 1995 Long Wharf Theater, Connecticut, consequently performed the play in November 1997, with Kathleen Chalfant starring. Edson applied her work understanding in a hospital as part of the encouragement for her play. Wit is the first play by the American schoolteacher and dramatist Margaret Edson. In 2001, the play was adapted into a cable TV movie with Emma Thompson as Vivian Bearing. Chalfant got an award from the Village Voice Obies for her presentation. As the play did not get a performance at a Broadway theatre, Wit was not appropriate for the Tony Awards. The play also got the “Best New Play” prize for 1999 from the New York Drama Critics’ Circle. Wit won the 1999 Pulitzer Prize for theater performance.
