About the Play:

The volume The Dark Lady / Pandora contains two full-length dramas by Jessica B. Hill. The Dark Lady is a romantic two-hander about Shakespeare's mysterious "Dark Lady of the Sonnets," and Pandora is a solo show about hope, interconnection, and life's biggest questions.

Pandora crosses quantum mechanics with Greek mythology. Pandora is sorry. It's all her fault and she's so sorry. From devastating natural disasters to that time you hit your shin on the coffee table, Pandora's been carrying the burden of world chaos and human suffering since the beginning of time. But she's starting to feel pretty suspicious… What if it was a set up? What if the box was empty all along? If there's one thing we know about Pandora, it's that she's curious. That curiosity leads her on a quest across time to discover the meaning of life, but the more she searches, the more questions seem to arise!

Pandora, her playwriting debut, had its world premiere in 2023 at the Prairie Theatre Exchange, a co-production with Shakespeare in the Ruins. (Cast: 1 female)

What people say about Pandora:

"Playwright Jessica B. Hill creates an otherworldly, life-affirming theatre experience." — Winnipeg Free Press

The Dark Lady celebrates the story of Emilia Bassano, one of England's first published female poets and believed to be the woman known as "the Dark Lady" described in Shakespeare's sonnets 127 to 152. She was also trilingual, mixed race, and a force to be reckoned with. In The Dark Lady, Shakespeare and Bassano collide as they wrestle with artistic collaboration, ambition, envy, and love – an entanglement that will profoundly shape both their lives and their work.

The Dark Lady, her second play, had its world premiere in 2023 with Shakespeare in the Ruins and then transferred to Shakespeare on the Saskatchewan in Saskatoon. (Cast: 1 female, 1 male)

What people say about The Dark Lady:

"Hill's snappy dialogue cracks like a whip throughout... At its heart, the play is a love story, but one that also asks potent questions about agency, the price artists pay for autonomy." — Winnipeg Free Press

About the Playwright:

Jessica B. Hill is a Black Canadian bilingual actor and playwright originally from Montreal. She was part of the Stratford Festival's Birmingham Conservatory and graduated from McGill University, and Dawson College's Dome program. Jessica established herself at the Stratford Festival over several seasons, starring in roles like Helena in All's Well That Ends Well and Lady Anne in Richard III. She has worked as an actor in Montreal, Stratford, Toronto, Winnipeg, and Saskatoon and teaches Chekhov and Shakespeare at the National Theatre School.