Free showings of Pygmalion in Eugene area

Plus the astrology of the play's original premieres

I’ll put out another post with March’s paid subscriber goodie, but I want to get this out ASAP — for my readers in the Eugene, Oregon, area, The Roving Park Players are currently putting on a charming production of George Bernard Shaw’s play Pygmalion. I saw it last night. Subsequent performances will take place:

• March 3 (tonight), 6:30 pm, Ebbert United Methodist Church, 532 C St, Springfield, OR

• March 7, 8, and 9, 6:30 pm, First Christian Church, 1166 Oak St, Eugene, OR

Admission is free, though they accept donations to cover costs like script royalties.

In Pygmalion, eccentric professor Henry Higgins teaches street vendor Eliza Doolittle to speak proper English like an upper-class lady. That was pretty much all I knew about the play going in. I was drawn to it when I saw the ad in the Eugene Weekly (which has recently resumed printing after a dramatic embezzlement scandal) because I saw myself as Eliza. I’ve lived my whole life in Eugene, and I haven’t traveled much, and sometimes people have treated me like that makes me not good enough.

Higgins (played by Tyler Crummett) turned out to be more complex than the judgmental creep I expected, though. In one early scene of the play, Higgins stands with a group of strangers and makes notes on their speech. He ultimately reveals that, due to his scholarly interest in phonetics, he can tell exactly where each person is from based on their accent — sometimes down to a specific street in London.

I would actually like to have that kind of Henry Higgins experience, where someone could definitively provide comforting certainty as to where I belong. I evidently have a weird accent that no one can place. I often get asked even by people in Eugene where I am from, although I think I got that question a bit more than usual when I spent a summer in Washington, D.C., during college.

Guesses as to where I’m from have included many locations I’ve never once visited, including Texas and various Scandinavian countries. The actual facts are as follows: I have lived in Eugene, Oregon, for my entire life. Both of my parents grew up in Nebraska. Several years ago, I did three past life regressions with a woman who was studying to be a hypnotist, and my most recent past life was allegedly as a coal miner in mid-20th century Appalachia. I have never been to Appalachia in this life. Other than two brief visits to British Columbia, Canada, I have never traveled outside the United States. I attended a Japanese language immersion elementary school here in Eugene.

Astrologically, I have Uranus in Sagittarius in the 3rd House of Communication opposite Chiron in Gemini in the 9th House of Foreign Countries. That may explain a lot of this.

Back to Pygmalion, language was such a prominent element in the play that I wondered what was happening in the language-oriented zodiac sign of Gemini when the play was written. Sure enough, Wikipedia reports that “Shaw wrote the play in early 1912,” and potent Pluto was indeed in Gemini for most of 1912, except for a chunk of September and October when Pluto peeked into Cancer.

As I saw it, the play was very focused on the English language. Last night, I was surprised by how well actors and actresses in Oregon performed not just British accents, but different types of British accents. I don’t have the life experience necessary to know how truly accurate they were, but Eliza (played by Lareina dePompeo) at least shifted from one accent to another obviously enough to keep the narrative flowing.

According to Wikipedia, however, a German-language version of the play premiered in both Vienna and New York before the English version premiered in London. It’s hard to imagine how the conflicts over different ways of pronouncing English letters and words would have been translated into German, although the underlying power dynamics are probably pretty universal.

I have constructed the charts for all three premieres based on the dates and cities given on Wikipedia. Times are unknown, so the charts do not have angles and houses.

The Vienna premiere in fall 1913 has Pluto in Cancer, but Pluto moved back into Gemini for the New York and London premieres in spring 1914. All three charts also have stuffy Saturn in language-oriented Gemini, so this really was a play for its moment!

The New York and London premieres both have Jupiter and Uranus conjunct in Aquarius. As we approach a Jupiter-Uranus conjunction in Taurus this coming April, perhaps Pygmalion is a play for this moment too. Director Danette Lamson wrote on the program, “As I have worked on this I have more and more come to the conclusion that what we call Pygmalion could just as easily be Frankenstein. Professor Higgins seems more mad scientist than respected professor of phonetics to me, as he transforms Eliza from her familiar place with a humble aspiration into a completely different person — changing her life completely — and he not having a care in the world about it.”

Jupiter does not just represent good fortune. Jupiter, the wise teacher, also represents benevolence that crosses the line into arrogance. No one wants to be told off when they have personally identified with the role of The Benefactor, but Pygmalion depicts the natural consequences of this type of behavior. Go see it if you can.