Her star rising as a Hollywood diva, Frances Farmer chooses to join the socialist Group Theatre in New York. This idealistic, raucous and non-conforming movie star, pursued by the government for her alleged communist connections, was finally incarcerated with the help of her mother at Steilacoom, a Seattle psychiatric hospital, where she was lobotomized and released as “cured” in 1949. Saint Frances of Hollywood has taken the biographical details of Frances Farmer’s life and transformed them into a mesmerizing and quintessential classical tragedy.

Cast of 4 women and 4 men.

Sally Clark
Born in Vancouver, Sally Clark is a critically acclaimed playwright who has been dazzling audiences with her penchant for dark humour, ironic wit, and sharp character portrayals. Her plays, typically presented in a series of short, vivid, and fast-paced scenes, seamlessly combine comedic and tragic motifs to tell the stories of strong and adventurous women. In Saint Frances of Hollywood and Life without Instruction, she demonstrates her knack for dramatizing the lives of historical figures, providing a feminist re-visioning of what it means and what it costs to be a heroine. Clark has been playwright-in-residence at Theatre Passe Muraille, the Shaw Festival, Buddies in Bad Times Theatre, Nakai Theatre, and Nightwood Theatre. She is also an accomplished painter, director, and filmmaker. When she was a resident artist at the Canadian Film Centre, she wrote and directed her award-winning short film Ten Ways to Abuse an Old Woman.

Clark moved to Toronto in 1974 but returned to Vancouver in 1994 and has been residing there since. For more information on the work and career of Sally Clark, visit her website.

Sally Clark's profile page

“It is this mix of fact and fantasy that Clark has captured so brilliantly and used to striking advantage … the effect is brutally chilling.”
—Variety

“A searing tragedy …”
—Toronto Star