Description

Ophelia’s Jump Productions (OJP) will present the world premiere of Second Death of a Mad Wife by Kelly McBurnette-Andronicos and directed by Beatrice Casagrán. The production will be performed at Ophelia’s Jump, located at 2009 Porterfield Way, Suite I, in Upland, from October 12 through November 3, 2024.

This “wonderfully creepy and surreal ‘Northeastern Southern Gothic Noir” story brings another production to the OJP stage by this talented storyteller. Previous productions by McBurnett-Andronicos presented at Ophelia’s Jump include A Poison Squad of Whispering Women (2020) and The Hall of Final Ruin (2022). Producing Artistic Director Beatrice Casagrán explains the selection of Second Death for the OJP’s 2024 Season,“Kelly McBurnette-Andronicos is one of my favorite playwrights and people. She creates fantastical stories from historical nuggets. Her plays are populated by delightfully flawed, funny, weird characters with compelling and often dark motivations. Her talent in building darkly funny worlds rings all my bells!”

THE STORY: Whatever happened to Jack the Ripper’s wife? Bunny Maybrick began life in an opulent Alabama mansion and is ending it in a squalid shack full of cats in rural

Connecticut. She’s already given away most of her meager belongings, but the heavy contents of her soul are harder to leave behind. That is, until a local prep school boy, Theo Voss, becomes an accomplice in Bunny’s meandering, mad, death-bed confession that includes adultery, arsenic addiction, and murder.

Kelly McBurnett-Andronicos is a self-described “small town, American playwright raised in Alabama, New Mexico and West Texas. My aesthetic view is a fusion of Southern Appalachian and Southwest U.S. culture and heavily influenced by the literary genres of Magical Realism, Romanticism and Gothicism.” Her full-length plays include the Southern Gothic crime noir, To Tread Among Serpents (Off-Off Broadway production, Winner of the Southern Playwrights Competition, O'Neill Semi-finalist) and the dark comedy western, The Hall of Final Ruin (Stage Raw Los Angeles Playwriting Award, Renaissance Theaterworks Brink! Award, Great Plains Theatre Conference Finalist, Stowe Story Labs Finalist, Two-time Princess Grace Semi-finalist, BAPF Semi-finalist).  

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Other plays include A Poison Squad of Whispering Women (BAPF Finalist), Second Death of a Mad Wife, and Maria Rasputin in Spangleland as well as many 10-minute plays. Her short play, El Loro, El Gato Y El Espíritu Santo (or The Parrot, the Cat and the Holy Ghost) is published by YouthPLAYS.

SECOND DEATH OF A MAD WIFE

Written by Kelly McBurnette-Andronicos

Directed by Beatrice Casagrán

Featuring: Billie Bryant, Jenny Buchanan, Preston Grant, Graham Kurtz, Jeff Sable, Robert Solomon and Hannah Whiteoak

Location: 2009 Porterfield Way, Suite I, Upland, CA 91786 

Regular Run: October 12 through November 3, 2024