Emma Sandal
Emma Sandall’s and New Light Theater Project’s ‘This Wrestling Place’
Emma Sandall’s and New Light Theater Project’s ‘This Wrestling Place' Just prior to the Covid-19 pandemic, Beth was hired by composer and choreographer, Emma Sandall to write, arrange and MD for her show ‘This Wrestling Place’ based on the Sheila Heti’s novel, ‘Motherhood’, an introspective, witty, and intimate book on the most difficult choice a woman can make: whether or not to have a child. The initial workshop run-through was completed in the weeks of April 2020 over zoom and was slated to be performed at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival later that year before being postponed.
The limited run featured guest artists Lin Manuel Miranda, Ben Folds, Gogol Bordello, and the Dresden Dolls joining the stage.
Sandall will be joined onstage in the workshop performances by Claudia Campbell and Michael Aguirre, with projection design by Yana Biryukova, costume design by An-lin Dauber, and additional choreography by Ashlee Wasmund. Music direction will be by Beth Meyers.
(Ben Folds, Sarah Norris, and Emma Sandall Team up for Stage Adaptation of Sheila Heti’s Motherhood, 2021)
This Wrestling Place is a new play with original music and movement by Emma Sandall and Sarah Norris, inspired by Sheila Heti’s Motherhood, an introspective, witty, and intimate book on the most difficult choice a woman can make: whether or not to have a child. Asking what is gained and what is lost when a woman becomes a mother, This Wrestling Place treats the most consequential decision of mid-adulthood with candor and humor. In her late thirties, when her friends are asking when they will become mothers, the protagonist considers whether she will do so at all.
(This Wrestling Place, n.d.)
