Where did this idea come from?
Creator Chelsea Sutton grew up playing cards with her grandmother, specifically a game called Spite & Malice. While helping her grandmother downsize her home, she found there were nearly 50 decks of cards. Chelsea set out to create a play-through-the-mail with the Post Theatrical crew using these found objects.
When her grandmother died of COVID in December 2020, however, the play took on a new direction and a new meaning.
Spite & Malice is part fiction, part play, part twisted autobiography using found objects and audience interaction. It can be done on your own time, because time is strange these days. It deals with grief, because grief is also strange. It is seeking to find magic in the ordinary.
Read an interview with Chelsea Sutton on Broadway World to learn more about the origin.
Photo to the right: the creator’s grandmother, circa 1940s.