The Yellow Wallpaper
by The Archive Theater Company

Sep. 04 - Sep. 20

 

The 1892 story by Charlotte Perkins Gilman The Yellow Wallpaper was written as a collection of journal entries narrated in the first person. The journal was written by a woman whose physician husband has rented an old mansion for the summer. Forgoing other rooms in the house, the husband confines the woman to an upstairs nursery. As a form of treatment, the husband forbids the journal writer from working or writing, and encourages her to eat well and get plenty of air so that she can recuperate from what he calls a "temporary nervous depression – a slight hystericaltendency", a common diagnosis in women at the time. As the reader continues through the journal entries, they experience the writer's gradual descent into madness with nothing better to do than observe the peeling yellow wallpaper in her room.

The Yellow Wallpaper is regarded as an important early work of American feminist literature for its illustration of the attitudes towards the mental and physical health of women in the 19th century. It is also lauded as an excellent work of horror fiction.

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The Yellow Wallpaper
by Jeff Davis, adapted from an 1892 story by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
The Archive Theater Company

September 4 - 20, 2026

Trinity Street Playhouse, 4th floor of First Austin, 901 Trinity Street, Austin

 

 

[poster design by Jennifer Rose Davis]