Exclusive interview with author Donna Thorland and a review of her new novel about a heroine of the American revolution who is a playwright and actress in New York
Rating: Three Stars
By Gabrielle Pantera
“Most histories of the Revolution that mentioned the theater at all referred to Congress closing the playhouses,” says Mistress Firebrand author Donna Thorland. “A few talked about British theatrical productions in New York and Philadelphia and Washington’s fondness for camp theatricals at Valley Forge. It was Congress’ ban that struck me as interesting, because no one bans something that isn’t happening…a lot.”
The Continental Congress ban on all theatrical entertainments in 1774 was motivated by Puritan moral disapproval of the stage. Politicians saw the stage was a threat to them, yet plays were still written by American playwrights and distributed in pamphlet form as political propaganda.
Mistress Firebrand is the third book in Thorland’s Renegades of the Revolution series. Thorland gives the heroine the unusual occupation of being a playwright. It’s surprising how she helps with the American Revolution. The book is filled with rich historical detail. The romance between her and a British officer grows slowly.
It’s 1777 Manhattan, the British have taken over the town. Jennifer Leighton is a struggling playwright. Severin Devere is a British intelligence officer whose job is to ensure the safety of General John Burgoyne, not only a military man, but also a successful playwright. When a letter arrives from Jennifer for the general asking for his help as a playwright, Severin goes to investigate what she really wants. Severin is half Native-American. Jennifer doesn’t get anywhere with the British and starts writing plays for the Rebels under the pen name Cornelia, in which she undermines the British Army. The pseudonymous Cornelia is put on the hanging list, bringing Severin into contact with Jennifer again.
“The theater is barely mentioned in most histories of the American Revolution,” says Thorland. “But when you look closely at the participants, so many of them, particularly on the British side, had one foot in the world of the playhouse. Burgoyne wrote for Drury Lane. After the war Banastre Tarleton would become the lover of actress, novelist, and early feminist Mary Robinson. Robert Rogers, who is currently enjoying some notoriety on television as a villain in AMC’s Turn wrote a play about Pontiac’s Rebellion. People on both sides of the Atlantic from all walks of life frequented the playhouse. Trying to paint a picture of the Revolution without the theater is like trying to explain the 20th century without the cinema.”
Thorland used to manage architecture and interpretation at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem. “One of our most popular programs was a theater festival that took place in our historic houses. We had 17th, 18th, and 19th century spaces where costumed actors told ghost stories during October evenings, and it became a huge regional event. As it grew we got interested in tapping into historic theater traditions, but there wasn’t that much written about the 18th century American stage.”
Mistress Firebrand is Thorland’s third stand-alone book in the Renegades of the Revolution series. She also writes for television and is currently working on the WGN drama Salem. As a TV writer she spends time in Los Angeles, where the Huntington is a great resource, and Salem, where she has access to the Boston and Salem Athenaeums and the Boston Public Library. She says she has spent a lot of time looking at notices of theatrical performances and descriptions of 18th century American theaters.
Thorland is currently writing her next book in the Renegades of the Revolution series in which a Dutch patroon, a highwayman who preys on the Hudson River Valley, and a schoolteacher find romance.
Thorland is a native of Bergen County, New Jersey, where her family dates back to the earliest Dutch settlers in the 1660s. She splits her time between her adopted hometown of Salem, Massachusettes, and Los Angeles.
Mistress Firebrand: Renegades of the American Revolution Paperback (Book 3) by Donna Thorland. Paperback, 416 pages, Publisher: NAL (March 3, 2015), Language: English, ISBN13 9780451471017. $15.00
