[ Music playing ] Chillingworth: Are you the child of misrule?

Pearl: [ Laughs ] I am my mother's child.

Chillingworth: Ah.

And, uh -- And who is your father?

Hester: Who is your heavenly father?

Pearl: I do not have one!

Narrator: Playwright Kate Hamill adapts literary classics for the stage, and she is a seasoned master at it.

Hamill: I've done "Sense and Sensibility," "Pride and Prejudice," "Dracula," "Little Women," "The Odyssey," "Vanity Fair."

I do radical adaptations.

So, I do plays that are not just sort of copy-and-paste versions of the original.

I want them to be in conversation with the original, but I want them to be really interesting to people both who know the classic very well and who have no relationship with it whatsoever.

I want people to be surprised.

I'm a feminist playwright, and I really believe that the classics are cultural touchstones for us.

Narrator: Kate's latest adaptation is based on "The Scarlet Letter."

The play premiered at Two River Theater in Red Bank.

Six actors and a puppet bring to life Nathaniel Hawthorne's archetypal tale of sin, punishment, and redemption in a 17th-century Puritan colony in Massachusetts.

And there are surprises, like this kiss... and this outburst from Hester's child, Pearl.

Hester: Pearl, who is your heavenly father?

Pearl: I do not have one!

Hamill: I really wanted to write a piece at least partially about the history and the legacy of wanting to control women and women's sexuality and fear of women's sexuality.

And I felt like "The Scarlet Letter" is a really good story with which to examine that.

Hawthorne himself wrote the novel at least partially out of guilt because his own ancestor was involved in the Salem witch trials.

Butler: When she's creating an adaptation, she really essentializes, gets to the core of the action, and has a fresh, modern take.

Everyone stopping and taking that in landed nicely... And having her in the room with us as we bring her world premiere to life is incredibly exciting.

Governor Hibbins: I'm afraid we have other business here, Mistress Prynne.

Goody Hibbins: Sacred business.

Butler: It's set in Massachusetts Bay Colony.

It follows a woman named Hester Prynne from 1642 to approximately 1647 in our play.

She has gotten pregnant, but her husband has not yet come to Massachusetts Bay Colony, has been missing for two years, and is presumed dead.

Hester: My child has no father, save a heavenly one.

Governor Hibbins: Mistress Prynne, I am a tender-hearted man.

I do not wish for you and your daughter to be perpetually locked away in darkness.

But I serve a higher power.

Butler: So, it's clear, whoever the father is, this is an act outside of marriage.

Narrator: In fact, the father is the town's unmarried minister, Reverend Dimmesdale, in love with the already married Hester.

He's tormented by his secret sin.

Dimmesdale: Hester!

Governor, it is me!

It was me.

I alone am to blame.

I -- [ All murmuring ] Hester: Look at me.

You must be well.

Dimmesdale: I wish I could be free.

Hamill: The "A" stands for "adultery."

And what's interesting is Hawthorne just wrote, when she does this, she's given a scarlet "A," which she embroiders and makes more and more elaborate.

But what they actually did to Massachusetts Bay Colony for people who committed adultery is they would flog you publicly.

Hester: Ahh!

Hamill: Then you would wear the "A."

And in other parts of the country, people were put to death for adultery.

Hester: Ahh!

Butler: Hester's daughter, born out of wedlock, born in sin, is Pearl.

And Pearl is a 4-year-old, and she hasn't really been socialized.

She's borderline feral.

[ Laughs ] And that makes her incredibly humorous.

It makes her fun to watch.

And Kate's spin on Pearl is particularly delicious.

Pearl: I am your little Pearl!

Hester: Do not use that terrible voice.

You know I do not like it.

Pearl: I like it!

Hester: You cannot run about in your shift.

Pearl: Why?

Hester: Because it is not decent.

Pearl: Why?

Hester: Because God said only animals may be naked without shame.

Pearl: Then I will be an animal!

Yip!

Yip!

Butler: As a mom, I'm particularly compelled by the moment where Hester thinks she might lose her child, faced with a bunch of men, for the most part, who may be threatening her ability to keep that child.

So, I find that moment quite visceral.

Governor Hibbins: A complaint has come to us recently, Mistress, of the life you're living in the woods.

Pearl: She lives like a witch in the cottage in the story!

Hester: Hush!

Chillingworth: Will you end up like your poor mother?

Pearl: No.

Chillingworth: Hmm?

Pearl: I will never have a scarlet letter when I am grown.

I shall never wear one at all.

Chillingworth: No?

Hamill: We are inheritors of a cultural legacy from the Puritans.

Their colony helped build some of our systems of government, so we still very much live in a world in America that is misogynistic, that is deeply suspicious of female sexuality, very interested in controlling women's bodies.

Hester: The only sin was in the shame.

Hamill: And we still live in a society where, if you do something wrong, there's not a really clear path to being totally reintegrated, to being forgiven.

I don't think we really have that.

Dimmesdale: I have seen the strange man, the devil in this world, and his face was mine!

And yours!

And yours!

And -- [ Gasps ] Goody Hibbins: It is her!

Help!