Esther and Vashti: A Play In Two Acts

By Carolyn Gage

A romantic drama set against a backdrop of war in ancient Persia. A young Hebrew woman and her former lover, the Queen of Persia, struggle against their personal and political differences to form an alliance against a common enemy.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Dec 15, 2012
• ISBN: 9781300528067

Book preview

Esther and Vashti

A Play in Two Acts

By Carolyn Gage

Copyright Page

Esther and Vashti © 2004, 2021 Carolyn Gage

All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-300-52806-7

Caution: Professionals and amateurs are hereby warned that Esther and Vashti is subject to a royalty. It is fully protected under the copyright laws of the United States of America, and of all countries covered by the International Copyright Union (including the Dominion of Canada and the rest of the British Commonwealth), and of all countries covered by the Pan-American Copyright Convention and the Universal Copyright Convention, and of all countries with which the United States has reciprocal copyright relations. All rights including, but not limited to, professional, amateur, recording, motion picture, recitation, lecturing, public reading, radio and television broadcasting, video or sound taping, all other forms of mechanical or electronic reproduction, such as information storage and retrieval systems and photocopying, and the rights of translation into foreign languages are expressly reserved. Particular emphasis is placed on the question of readings and all uses of this play by educational institutions, permission for which must be secured in writing from the author or the author’s representative. No amateur or stock performance or reading of the play may be given without obtaining, in advance, the written permission of the Author.

All inquiries concerning professional and amateur performance rights should be addressed to the Author via her website at www.carolyngage.com

Summary

A feminist retelling of the traditional Purim story from the Bible—a retelling that foregrounds the part of the story that is glossed over in the patriarchal text, namely, the sexual colonization of women.

Esther, a radical Jewish lesbian living in exile, and Vashti, a Persian woman of privilege, were lovers. Complying with her family’s expectations, Vashti has married the king of Persia, but Esther cannot interpret this as anything except a betrayal and an abandonment. When Vashti encourages a Persian captain to court Esther, Esther is outraged and goes to the palace to confront her former girlfriend.

The ambitious vice-chancellor Haman has been stirring up anti-Semitic sentiment among the officers of the Persian army, in order to use a massacre of the Jews to divert attention from his usurpation of the throne.

In the meantime, during Esther’s visit to the harem, the king is holding a banquet for his officers—a banquet that features the rape of one of the women from the harem. Vashti is shocked and terrified when she discovers that she has been called to dance for the officers. Esther engineers her escape from the palace, and the two women go underground, hiding in the homes of Jewish women.

Esther is discovered by Haman during a roundup of eligible virgins as candidates for queenship. Vashti, knowing that Esther could never submit to sexual violation, goes to the palace to die with her lover. The play reaches its dramatic climax when the plight of the two women coincides with the palace takeover by the army, a revolt of the harem women, and a daring rescue attempt by Jewish vigilante women, led by Esther’s young cousin.

Esther and Vashti attempt to avert the impending massacre of the Jews by issuing an edict granting the Jews permission to arm and defend themselves against their enemies. This mandate for self-defense is ritualized in the final scene, when the Jewish women and the harem women join together to commemorate the anniversary of their victory and to pledge themselves to the defense of their daughters and each other.

This is a fast-paced, high-action drama where the love story of two women of different cultures and class backgrounds plays itself out against a backdrop of anti-Semitism and the sexual colonization of women.

Thirteen women, eight men, two teenaged girls (unspecified of male and female extras)

Two hours

Multiple sets

Introduction

Esther and Vashti is a play about resistance—and about women’s alliances across lines of color and ethnicity.

The original scenario for the play was written fourteen years before I actually sat down to write the dialogue. In this first draft, Esther and Vashti were exceptional women. I did not have a community of Jewish women in the play at all, and the women of the harem were all stereotypically brainwashed, backbiting fembots competing for the king’s attention. I was in my early thirties at that time, and I had just come out. I had no experience of women’s communities and my lesbian identity at that time was defined almost entirely by my isolated acting-out of resistance to and rejection of patriarchal norms.

Fourteen years later, I had learned that the exceptional woman working in isolation burns herself out in mental illness and physical exhaustion. I had learned the most searing lessons of my adult life from my years of living and working in the lesbian separatist communities of Southern Oregon. I learned that women are unendingly fierce and resourceful, that real education begins where academic education leaves off, that wherever there are enclaves of women—no matter how oppressed or seemingly colonized—there will always be subversive, coded behaviors; ongoing attitudes of resistance; and deep, native intelligence. I learned to trust community and I learned the wisdom of the circle—a wisdom that is embedded in spiritual process, bridging the gap between the tyranny of majority rule and the privileging of dysfunction inherent in consensus.

Esther and Vashti became a celebration of communities and alliances, instead of a narrative of two who managed to get away. One of the problems of the earlier draft was just what it meant for an individual to get away. It takes a community to create a context, and without that context, the individual is faced with the Promethean task of daily redefinition. In fact, in the earlier draft, I had simply rung down the curtain at the point where Esther and Vashti confronted the king—unable to imagine anything except martyrdom, but unwilling to present that on the stage.  Without community, there can be no effective strategy—and without strategy, there can be no resolution, only sensational exits and melodramatic blackouts. It had taken me fourteen years to understand that individualism is predatory, that symbiosis, not competition, determines the survival of the species. Finally, I had learned that without a community to bear witness, there can be no healing.

In Esther and Vashti, Esther is a separatist—and, in contrast with Vashti’s liberal humanism, she is an easy target for ridicule. Her rigid policing of cultural boundaries and her refusal to change with the times read like paranoia, prejudice, and puritanism. As the noose of imperialism tightens, however, Vashti’s easy accommodation of mainstream privilege begins to appear more and more sinister, and the line between assimilation and collaboration becomes impossible to distinguish. Vashti’s awakening comes when she realizes that her status as a Persian citizen and as a member of the elite class cannot shield her from the degradations of her gender caste. It is Esther, with the clarity and expediency born of her separatism, who has the presence of mind to save her.

I think my favorite scene in the play—possibly one of my favorite scenes of all my plays—is the scene with the knife. Vashti has come to Esther to offer to