Courtesy of Mark Beyreis, P'25

“The Sweet Science of Bruising,” Masque & Gown’s spring Main Stage production, premiered last Friday and Saturday in Pickard Theater. The play centers four women in 1869 who take part in an underground boxing group. Each woman’s journey is marked by her experience of gender as the characters’ stories expand and intersect.

Eleanor Beyreis ’25, who plays Violet Hunter, one of the leading roles, noted the value of Pickard Theater as a space.

“This is the first time in a long time that Masque & Gown has been able to be on the big stage,” Beyreis said.

Being intentional when choosing a play that would fit the larger space was very important to director Mia Schiff ’25. Though she has been heavily involved with Masque & Gown throughout her time at Bowdoin, Schiff made her directorial debut with “The Sweet Science of Bruising.”

“The vision [of the play] in Pickard just came to me. I was imagining every scene in different portions of Pickard, and I just could see the show coming onto that stage,” Schiff said.

Pickard’s larger size allowed for each character’s story to occupy its own part of the stage. The main set piece of the show was a boxing ring in the center of the stage, built by Haley Campau ’27 and Julia Starck ’26, where the separate stories of the four women eventually united.

Schiff said she was initially attracted to this play because of its grit. The four women, played by Beyreis, Mia Cheney ’28, Anna Monaghan ’27 and Lindsay Golan ’27, seem to be very different when first introduced. Despite the women leading different lives, they bond over experiencing  misogyny.

“Feeling second-rate in this patriarchal society is common,” Schiff said. “The play being about all four of them trying to overcome those different oppressive forces really spoke to me.”

Cheney emphasized the importance of physicality in the show. Apart from Golan, the cast and crew had no prior experience with boxing. However, using boxing techniques that her friends, Siena Harrigan ’25, Samuel Berets ’25 and Sophie Gold ’25, taught her, Schiff was able to choreograph four complete boxing matches.

“I built this attack and defense toolkit and then was able to write these fight outlines,” Schiff said.

Beyreis said that an intimacy coordinator was brought in to help support the cast with scenes depicting domestic violence.

“Their job is really to facilitate safety and comfort for people in those intense situations,” Beyreis said.

Though the show takes place in Victorian England in the 1860s, many of the themes it tackles are still relevant today.

“Overcoming your own personal struggles, that idea, transcends time,” Cheney said.

Beyreis believes that choosing to reintroduce stories from the past can show audiences that today’s issues have been challenged before, which can inspire a sense of renewed motivation. Schiff, too, hopes to inspire those watching the show.

“[I hope that they’re] not seeing the story as something very disconnected to their own lives, but thinking about how the themes that are brought up might be connected to people that they know today themselves, or just our society at large,” Schiff said.