Dramaturgical Analysis Website for
‘The Artificial Woman’
Head Dramaturg: Artis Anderson
Dramaturgs: Jennifer Honeywell and Sierra Shirley-Reuter
Book by Amy Gerstler and Steve Gunderson
Music by Steve Gunderson
Lyrics by Amy Gerstler
Directed by Kirsten Brandt
Experimental Theater
University of California Santa Cruz
February 25-27 & March 3-6, 2022
Synopsis
The Artificial Woman is historical fiction based on the tempestuous, nearly three-year relationship between Austrian artist Oskar Kokoschka and composer Alma Mahler. We also examine the relationship between mother and child. Alma’s daughter Anna (from Alma’s marriage to composer Gustav Mahler) is in the shadow of her headstrong and competitive mother when a child. Yet, when Oskar comes into her and her mother’s lives, he becomes an inspirational catalyst for Anna. Through the years we see Anna’s complicated relationship with her mother grow and witness Oskar’s and Almas’s relationship die. Their breakup inspired the obsessed Kokoschka to commission artist Hermine Moos to create a life-sized Alma “doll”. The play imagines the doll’s subsequent brief entanglement with Oskar and its aftermath, raising questions relating to gender roles, art-making, obsession and objectification, the Pygmalion myth, women as “muses”, and the often vexing nexus of love and art.