The Passion of Miss de Marco, Unemployed Stenographer

The Passion of Miss de Marco, Unemployed Stenographer is an interdisciplinary theater work, incorporating elements from opera, musical theater, oratorio, dance, straight play and fine art to tell the story of Miss Norma de Marco, a young, queer woman in 1930s New York and her brush with media fame before her untimely death.

The narrative is based on the actual news coverage of Norma de Marco’s injury during an armed robbery of a queer club in the East Village, where she intervened, saving the life of a police officer, receiving a blow to the head with a pistol for her trouble. The head injury was later found to be the likely source of her presumed-suicide the following evening, though many other factors were also at play.

A modern take on the Greek chorus, reading actual headlines and news articles about the events as they unfolded, propels the story, interspersed scenes from the last three months of Norma’s life. Based on historical documentation from her life, the show follows her introduction to the queer scene by her uptown girlfriend, the robbery and its aftermath, plus the media debacle that followed her untimely death.

Structured as a queer lives-of-the-saints style play, Miss de Marco is ultimately a reflection on how well we can ever truly know a historical figure from outside sources, and questions what we actually know about queer icons from the past and their lives.