Senior distinction project turns to Duke professor's play

It began with interrogation and an empty child’s bedroom.

Two Small Bodies follows the story of a woman whose children have been discovered missing and an investigating police officer insists on proving her guilt.

The production is Brittany Duck’s senior distinction project, which she began working on in the fall of 2009. After reading through several plays, she decided on Two Small Bodies for the unique challenge it provided.

“I was really feeling that I wanted something strange, something challenging, something I’d never done before,” Duck said. “[The play] really shows that you’ve got to appreciate what you love.”

The play opens simply enough: Eileen Maloney, a woman separated from her husband, is being interrogated by cool and abrasive Lt. Brann about the disappearance of her children. Although it is not yet evident how Eileen (played by Duck) feels about her children, nor what has happened to them, it rapidly becomes clear Lt. Brann (sophomore Kyle Glackin) is intent on uncovering her guilt, whether she’s innocent or not. The play focuses largely on their vacillating relationship—sometimes sweet and gentle, other times bitter and hostile—until the poignant climax when the missing childrens’ fates are revealed.

Duck, who also casted and costumed the two-person production, first met with director Marshall Botvinick, Trinity ’06, in October. Botvinick has been overseeing the play’s rehearsals for the last month.

“I think the play is very important in that it explores issues of class, gender and race by virtue of the casting,” he said.

Although there is no overt discussion of race in the script, Botvinick believes the casting—Duck is black, Glackin is white—will invoke some questions of race and power, particularly given Glackin’s overtly authoritative Lt. Brann.

“There’s an interesting dynamic between the two characters,” Glackin said. “It will play on the audience’s own feelings.... It is interesting to see where your initial impressions will lead you.” Duck said she also chose the play because of its playwright, theater studies professor Neal Bell, who went to a few of the show’s rehearsals. Bell wrote the play in 1976, and it was adapted into a film in 1993.

He said he is pleased to see it performed on Duke’s campus.

“I was very happy they wanted to do [my play],” he said. “I think they’re doing a good job with it, so the play comes through. I’m looking forward to seeing the final version.”

Bell wrote the play after reading the true-story account of a woman whose children disappeared, and the police officer who became consumed with the case.

“The thing that interested me most was, what was this guy obsessed about? Why was he so determined to prove her guilty, given that there was no evidence or motive?,” he said.  “A lot of times, when I write a play, it begins with a question I don’t know the answer to. That was the question: why was he so obsessed?”

Two Small Bodies runs tonight through Saturday at 8 p.m. in Brody Theater on East Campus. Admission is free.

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