Our newest project is a series of virtual salons in which we’ll collectively watch or listen to stories, listen to artists talk about their work, and discuss the myriad topics that emerge. 

This salon featured The Yellow Wallpaper, a reading of Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s 1892 short story with which Scoundrel & Scamp launched their inaugural season in October 2017. The story follows the slow, chilling unraveling of a woman suffering both from a so-called “hysterical tendency” -- and from its prescribed cure. It calls audience attention to gender dynamics and mental health, as well as the dangers of confinement: something we may recognize all too well in the present moment. 

Claire Marie Mannle is our reader, and is joined by scholar Maria Celis to enrich our understanding of the world of The Yellow Wallpaper. Tyler Meier hosts our event.

Tyler Meier is the University of Arizona’s Poetry Center's Executive Director and on the board at The Scoundrel & Scamp Theatre. Prior to coming to the Poetry Center, he served as managing editor at The Kenyon Review and co-director of the Kenyon Review Young Writers Workshop. He received an MFA from the University of Washington, and his poetry and nonfiction have appeared in At Length, AGNI (online), Laurel Review, Bat City Review, jubilat, Washington Square, Thermos, Forklift, Ohio, and elsewhere.

Claire Marie Mannle is the Associate Artistic Director at the The Scoundrel & Scamp. At The S&S she directed The Thanksgiving Play, Eurydice and Mr. Burns, A Post-Electric Play and performed in The Yellow Wallpaper. Outside of the S&S her recent directing work includes an adaptation of Euripides’ The Bacchae (SITI Company’s Skidmore Intensive) and Nor Any Drop to Drink, a devised play about water issues in the Southwest (UA Studio Series). As an actor, she has performed around town in King Lear, The Grapes of Wrath, Macbeth, and The White Snake at The Rogue Theatre and in The Tempest andThe Comedy of Errors for Arizona Repertory Theatre. She is an Instructor for the School of Theatre, Film, and Television at The University of Arizona. A New York City native raised in the Midwest, she came to Tucson via Los Angeles where she worked with The Grand Guignolers, Cornerstone Theater Company, A Noise Within, The Antaeus Academy, and SITI Company. She has her MFA from the Dell’Arte International School of Physical Theater and her BA from Smith College

Maria Celis lives in Tucson and is a full-time mother to her three kids. In her spare time, she likes to collect half dead plants, and bring them back to life. Born in Guatemala, she migrated to Los Angeles where she was raised. She obtained her bachelor’s degree in English and Art from the University of Minnesota, where she wrote her thesis on Charlotte Perkins Gilman's The Yellow Wallpaper.