“GIRL WITH A CAMERA” – a new work by author Byron Nilsson

Constance Lopez & Lora Lee Ecobelli are pleased to announce the upcoming production of Girl With A Camera, a new work by Byron Nilsson opening Friday, May 9^th, 2025 at the Claverack Free Library.

How does a creative artist come to terms with sudden fame? Photographer Ivy Wilmot found success as a photo-journalist but became a public figure when she married a movie star. As the marriage unraveled, so too did her career. There was another man in love with her – but he was the FBI agent investigating her father. Girl With A Camera shows us a life that couldn’t be constrained in the borders of a photograph.

Local playwright, Byron Nillson shares his thoughts on Girl with a Camera Like Ivy Wilmot, the protagonist of my play “Girl with a Camera,” I learned about photography as a boy who was not-yet ten, working in our basement darkroom alongside my father. I can’t say that I went on to share Ivy’s passion for the art, but I branched into theater, writing and acting in plays, and journalism, covering music and drama even as I struggled to bring a novel to life.

Challenged by a very talented actress I performed with to write a play giving women better roles than the typical male-gaze-saturated scripts that still clog our stages, I imagined the story of a woman whose creative passion carries her into a career more successful than she ever dreamed, but at the cost of the integrity that initially fueled her. A chance (but plausible, I promise) meeting with a Harper’s Bazaar photo editor begins her professional journey; a photo session with a Hollywood star catapults her into an impulsive romance that will prove to be her career undoing in that awful pre-me-too era.

Ivy is telling her story at a gallery to introduce a career retrospective presenting her most notable works, and the story is framed by eight of those photographs, each of which takes her back to the circumstance under which the particular image was captured. This presents a special challenge to the actor in this role, because these trips back and forth through time happen instantly, with no different costuming or make-up for support.

Alongside the story of Ivy’s career is the surprising evolution of her relationship with her father, Julius, an optical engineer whose work in a secret (and for-real) government project required enough security clearance to bring an FBI agent into the picture. He sees the adolescent Ivy grow into a desirable woman, and it’s possible that this clouds his judgment as a more radical aspect to Julius’s past is revealed. Co-producers Lora Lee Ecobelli and Constance Lopez with the support of The Claverack Library and The Two of Us Productions, will be presenting the world premiere of this play at The Claverack Library, and you won’t be surprised to learn that I’m very eager to see the result. It’s a challenging piece, but my rehearsal glimpses show that they’re up to the challenge.

“Girl with a Camera” has had a couple of table reads, allowing me to cut some of the fat that invariably clings to a new work. I was gratified to be asked, after one of those sessions, why Ivy Wilmot wasn’t better known. “I worked in Manhattan around the time she was there,” said a photographer friend, “and all those details about the magazines and other photographers were certainly true. So how is it I never met her?