Perspectives: Light Through the Cellar Door

Light Through the Cellar Door (Dramatic Reading)

Barbara Hume, Playwright

Come experience a dramatic reading of the one-act family drama Light Through the Cellar Door. Both historic and topical, Light Through the Cellar Door is set in 1989 in St. Louis as a state supreme court ruling titled “William Webster vs. Reproductive Health Services” jeopardizes female reproductive health by ending state funding for women’s clinics in St. Louis. Maura, a lawyer representing the women’s clinic, is spending the weekend with her mother, Agnes, an Irish Catholic who could never say the word sex or birth control. Maura’s daughter, Phoebe, arrives resentful of her mother’s recent separation from Nick, her father. Three generations of women struggle with their pasts and current challenges surrounding each one’s reproductive choices. In this family, a passionate crisis of disparate viewpoints reveals the strength it takes to be vulnerable with those we love.

Barbara Hume is a Seattle-based freelance playwright, singer, actor/director whose two full-length plays explore social issues set within a drama of disparate or strained relationships. Light through the Cellar Door focuses on the challenges facing women’s reproductive choices. Hume's prior works include: Red Line, presented in Theatre 33’s 2024 Summer “Pop Up” Play Reading Festival in Salem, Oregon, which depicts the friendship of two young men, one White and one Black, challenged by the status quo of racism; On the House, a comedy about online dating for seniors, which was featured in PDX Playwrights’ April 2024 Ten Minute Play festival in Portland, Oregon and in the most recent Island Theatre Ten Minute Play festival at BPA in August 2024.