12 May Interview with Molly Jamin, Writer of “Blessed are the Hungry”

For this interview, we spoke with with playwright, Molly Jamin. This year, she is the writer of Blessed are the Hungry, a story of desire, theology, and hunger. We talked about how their background historical research, audience and creator intention, and how the format of a one-act play can help inform and shape work.

Can you introduce yourself and share how your journey as a writer began?

Hi! I’m Molly, I’m a playwright and student at the University of Victoria. I’m currently studying ancient Greek language and literature, and creative writing. It is difficult to pinpoint exactly when I started writing. Since childhood, I’ve used the written word to make sense of the world. I started reading at a young age and quickly fell in love with stories, so writing felt like a natural progression of that love. It gave me a sense of control in my turbulent teenage years–a physical process that confirmed I could, indeed, shape the narrative of my own life.

I’ve always held a particular reverence, not just for stories but for the physical objects that carry those stories, especially books. I remember my mother’s compendium of Shakespeare that sat on the shelf reserved for the delicate, adult books that my parents expected my sister and me to have no interest in. But I adored that book. Between its dusty pages, I fell in love with Shakespeare. And by the time I was old enough to be in our school production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, I was hooked.

The first piece I ever wrote for theatre was a 10-minute movement piece called Wretch, which drew connections between the portrayal of Ophelia in Hamlet and the 19th-century construction of ‘female hysteria.’ My grade 10 drama class performed it at The Good Will Shakespeare Festival in Vernon, BC. That was the first time I really understood what original theatre could do–that as much as I loved the classics, they did not hold the ultimate authority on what was ‘theatre.’ That there was room for reinterpretation, adaptation and experimentation, even with canonical works like Shakespeare, and that I, as young and unestablished as I was, could be a part of that experimentation.

Today, I think my writing still reflects that early fascination with adaptation. I still find myself drawn to something older, looking to history, mythology and classic literature to find inspiration for my pieces.

This is your third consecutive year with the One-Act Play Festival. As a seasoned pro, what have you learned from taking your past submissions from page to stage, and how did those experiences specifically influence your writing process for Blessed are the Hungry?

I think one of the most valuable lessons I’ve taken away from my experience with the One Act Festival is learning to ‘play’ in the writing room. Experimental scenes have become a major part of my writing process—that is, taking the ideas lingering at the back of my skull and putting them to the page with no expectations or censorship.

This is how I ended up writing one of my favourite scenes in Blessed, which we’ve been referring to in rehearsal as ‘the maenad dream sequence.’ It’s a scene where the main character is initiated into this alternate theology–one that turns the Christian idea of appetite on its head– by a seductive and frightening Greek chorus. It’s surreal, enchanting and kind of grotesque. And I’ll admit, while writing it, I stopped a couple of times and thought to myself: Is this too much? This is kinda gross. Ugh, I wonder how my audience will respond to this?

But I realized that I was brushing up against my own discomfort. And instead of shying away and self-editing, I leaned into what was unsettling me. It was just an experiment, after all. And giving myself that freedom allowed me to access something that, ultimately, feels vital and true. Learning to trust my strangest impulses and make space in my creative practices for discomfort, obscenity, and other unrefined emotions has, I believe, made me a better writer.

What unique opportunities does the one-act format afford you when trying to build a show and a story?

As someone who has always struggled with the ‘less is more’ approach to… well, pretty much everything I do, but especially writing, the one-act format forces me to distill my stories into their most potent and efficient form. Run-time is always on my mind during the rehearsal process, so it becomes an exercise for myself, my dramaturge, and the director in deciding how to tell this story in a way that doesn’t sacrifice any depth, but can work within the limits of the medium.

At the same time, the one-act format is incredibly immersive simply by virtue of its structure. It asks audiences to buy in completely to this short, hopefully moving experience from beginning to end. There is no intermission, no opportunity to check your phone between acts, no way to not engage with the story being presented to you. This concentrated format creates a momentum and intensity that I love working with as a writer.

What drew you to exploring the intersection of orthodox piety and this ‘older, bloodier theology’? Were there specific messages or questions you wanted to interrogate with this piece?

I think the motivation for this piece started with the exploration of hunger, particularly the ways women experience hunger, through the lens of two opposing religious frameworks. On the one hand, you have the monastic discipline of Christian Orthodoxy, steeped in tradition and dictated by a hierarchical structure. And on the other, the ecstatic ancient rites of Dionysus, fictionalized (and sensationalized) in Euripides’ tragedy The Bacchae.

Orthodoxy as a vehicle for this story presents this interesting dichotomy because, on the one hand, their traditions and rituals feel physical and embodied in a way that we don’t always associate with Western Christianity. Orthodox Christians use physical rituals as an important part of their worship (fasting, prostration, the practice of veneration, etc.), but at the same time, Orthodox monasticism is marked by the idea of asceticism, of achieving higher spiritual understanding through a detachment from the physical world. Saints often become saints
through restriction, denial and starvation. This is certainly the case with Mary of Egypt, a beggar saint from the 5th century AD whose story is used in the play as an example of Orthodox asceticism.

Meanwhile, in The Bacchae, the women of Thebes, overcome by a religious frenzy, retreated to the mountains where they danced incessantly, drank to excess, dismembered livestock with their bare hands, and were believed to have eaten the meat raw.* To these maenads (the female followers of Dionysus), their worship looks like bloody indulgence and a total surrender to the bodily, a stark contrast to the measured and disciplined traditions of what would become the dominant religion in Greece.

What interested me in the intersection between these two religious practices was the concern they placed on the female appetite in particular. Across time and cultures, women in religious and mythic narratives alike are characterized by their relationship to consumption, be it marked by indulgence or restraint: Eve ate the Apple, Persephone ate the pomegranate seeds. Female Christian mystics like St. Mary of Egypt and Catherine of Sienna were said to survive great lengths of time, sustaining themselves on nothing but prayer and the Holy Eucharist. The Bacchae’s maenads are likened to animals, without the reason to temper their vicious desires. Women’s relationships to hunger, whether physical, spiritual, emotional, or sexual, are rarely, if ever, seen as neutral. They are scrutinized or sanctified, but a woman may never, simply, eat.

In different ways, both traditions also shape what interpersonal relationships between women look like. In environments that seek to regulate female appetite and desire, women can become unconscious (or conscious) enforcers of the system out of survival. Think The Handmaid’s Tale. When women are taught to police each other’s behaviour, connection can feel dangerous, and any sort of genuine relationship between one another can be perceived as conspiratorial. This is how the maenads were framed to Euripides’ audience: a bloody example of what can happen if the strict Athenian gender roles were ignored. In Blessed are the Hungry, the convent becomes a microcosm for these tensions to play out in. When Lena refuses to participate in the fast, she is not simply making a personal choice, but performing an act that has communal consequences and threatens the delicate spiritual and social structure of the convent itself.

Each of these traditions presents hunger as a component of its worship, but the approach is radically different. One sees hunger as a test to weather, the other an instinct to follow. The motivation in drawing them together for me was not to present one as right and the other wrong—one evolved, the other primitive, one correct, the other corrupt— but to explore the friction between them. I’m rarely interested in moralizing anything in my plays. For me, that tension is where the drama comes from.

How do religious rituals surrounding hunger and appetite—such as fasting and feasting—shape women’s social and spiritual identities? How are female relationships tested in the face of religious dogma? And what happens when a woman refuses to starve herself? These are the questions I wanted to explore with the play.

* There is little evidence, archeological or otherwise, to suggest the actual historical followers of Dionysus
performed the sparagmos or omophagia (the ritualistic tearing and eating raw of sacrificial meat). But the
myth is pervasive, thanks in part to Euripides, and I believe there is value in the analysis of the stories
that humans tell, even if those stories have no historical evidence supporting them.

As a creator, what are you hoping to get out of exploring this story, and when the lights come up, what do you hope the audience takes away from the experience?

What caught my attention in the early stages of exploration was how enduring the cultural anxieties discussed above still are. Women are still expected today to police their own desires, to starve themselves thinner, to ration their anger, frustration and grief to placate the emotions of others, to embody self-denial physically, spiritually, emotionally and sexually in order to fit the rigid mould of a ‘good’ woman. Women still are praised for their restraint and punished for any excess.

In that sense, I hope the play feels somewhat contemporary, despite the setting and content. Even if the world of the play feels unfamiliar, I hope that its central tensions feel recognizable enough to my audience to open a dialogue. I don’t necessarily want the audience to leave the theatre with answers. I don’t think any work that invites discussion like that can be prescriptive. Instead, I hope that audiences can leave the theatre interrogating their own relationships with hunger and desire, deconstructing what they may have been taught to believe about appetite, and perhaps finding something within themselves they are no longer willing to starve.

What has your experience been like with the many various aspects of this festival and why is it such an important event?

From a personal standpoint, the festival has become such a genuinely important part of my life. I look forward to June every year and spend most of the winter and spring planning my next piece in anticipation of participating. Each year, I challenge myself to write something more ambitious than the last, and to more deeply explore the themes that have been gnawing at me since last year. Having that annual routine pushes me to actually produce new work even in the depths of winter when there’s nothing I’d rather do than curl up in front of the space heater or rot in bed.

On a broader level, the festival gives tangible opportunities to young artists who, otherwise, may not have access to the space or resources to develop their work. I know I would struggle to produce the shows I’ve written without the support of the festival. By keeping the barrier to entry so low, the festival has allowed me, young and green as I may be, to actually be a playwright, not just someone who writes plays. It’s a one-of-a-kind opportunity for local and emerging artists to showcase their work in one of the city’s greatest venues, The Belfry Theatre! And while, of course, there are benefits to a lottery submission system, I appreciate knowing that if I’m selected for a showcase, it’s because the selection committee genuinely connects with my work.

And finally, (not to get sappy, but) when I moved to Victoria, I fell in love with the Belfry as a venue. The space immediately felt sacred to me. Maybe I’m just partial to its history as a church. Either way, I made myself a quiet promise–more of a wish than a goal—that one day I would write a show that would be performed on the Belfry main stage. And now, thanks to the One-Act Festival, I get to cross that dream off my list at 23! What a gift!

Finally, perhaps our most important question. It’s very late, you’re heading home after night 6 of an 8-evening run, and you stop at a gas station, Circle K, corner store-type place. You need something sweet, something salty, and a drink – what do you get?

I’m not a super candy-oriented person (sensitive teeth), but when I do grab something sweet, it’s usually some form of sour candy: peach gummies, Skittles, and things of that ilk. Salty is much more my style. I usually gravitate towards hickory sticks or plain, salted potato chips. As for drinks, I’ve been really loving the Poppi sodas lately—my favourite flavour is the wild berry! Followed closely by the cranberry flavour that is only sold during Christmas.