The Bearded Circus Ladies journal

ANNIE JONES, THE BEARDED LADY

First hired as a young girl as "the infant Esau," Annie Jones was described by Barnum as unique. He paid her well, and Annie went on to educate herself, become an accomplished musician and marry twice. She hid her appearance in public by means of heavy veils. The top-selling bearded lady in the country, Annie was a spokeswoman for a group determined to remove the word "freak" from show-business vocabulary.

Rebecca Scott, Former General Manager of Playwrights' Workshop Montréal

The following pages are excerpts from the playwriting journal that Jan Derbyshire kept while she was writing Bearded Circus Ladies. The journal is a mixture of story ideas, pictures, stream of consciousness writing, personal notes, newspaper clippings, and drawings. It begins on August 21, 1995 and finishes with newspaper reviews from the play's production at the 1996 Women in View Festival in Vancouver, British Columbia.

Most of the entries, and most of the play, were written between November 15 and December 15. During that month, Jan was Playwrights' Workshop's artist-in-residence. She says that her stay in Montréal was the first time in her life that she was able to concentrate on writing, without distraction or interruption.

At that time, Playwrights' Workshop was located in the Strathearn Centre on Jeanne-Mance and I worked in the office as the General Manager. Jan would sleep all day, and then come into the office late in the afternoon. We went home at 6:00 pm and left Jan behind in the office. When we arrived back the next morning, Jan would still be there, her journal full of new ideas and drawings to show us and discuss. She also had a small tape recorder with her, and she said that she would rant and run around in our rehearsal hall each night, all the while, recording her ideas onto cassettes.

Each morning, the ashtrays would be overflowing and blue smoke still hung in the air. And, each morning, I was excited to get to work to find out what had happened to the Freaks while I slept. Would the Bearded Circus Lady leave the carnival? Would we find Aunt Grace, the living skeleton? Can Mother Load ditch the burden? Is Mrs. Social Norm for real? What would happen if you jumped from a bridge and survived? If you wanted to live underwater, could you grow gills? How does Barbie stand-up with feet that small and breasts that big and pointed? And how can anyone understand why 14 women were shot in the halls of their university in Montréal on December 6, 1989?

It was a great pleasure to get to know Jan that month, and it was a privilege to be a part of her writing process. Her imagination is wild and her wit sharp and pointed. And her courage to tell her stories honestly and completely, not because she can but because she must, inspires me.

Rebecca Scott
Former General Manager (1994-98)
Playwrights' Workshop Montréal