Presidents' College- Planning the Perfect Crime: Rope
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Meet: Lectures: KF Room, Harrison Libraries, UHa & Performance & Preview: Hartford Stage
Why does the idea of the “perfect crime” intrigue us and how do the participants (criminal, detective, and victim) see it, plan it, act on it? There are core ethical and practical issues central to good crime fiction, and we’ll discuss them; read Patricia Highsmith’s Strangers on a Train (1950) and/or watch the Alfred Hitchcock movie adaptation (1951) before the first session to dive fully into our debate. Have these ethical and practical issues changed since Patricia Highsmith penned her 1950 crime novel, irrevocably altering the genre? The Hartford Stage production of Rope, based on the riveting crime thriller Rope’s End by Philip Hamilton - that also inspired Jimmy Stewart’s first film with Hitchcock in 1948 - opens up fruitful ground for our second session.
We’ll talk over how (if) the production maintained suspense and whether those ethical, practical issues were successfully handled. Did the adaptation follow or deviate from Highsmith’s model? Did it incorporate tropes referencing classic crime fiction à la Highsmith or Hitchcock? Popular Pamela Bedore will shine a light into murderously dark places.
PAMELA BEDORE is associate professor of English at the University of Connecticut, where she teaches American Literature, Popular Literature, and Gender Theory. Editor of Clues: A Journal of Detection and author of Dime Novels and the Roots of Detective Fiction She has published widely on popular genres, including her Great Course, Great Utopian and Dystopian Works of Literature (2017)—available on audible or at your public library—and her most recent book, The Routledge Introduction to Canadian Crime Fiction (2024).
MELIA BENSUSSEN is the Artistic Director of Hartford Stage. Former Chair of the Performing Arts Department at Emerson College in Boston, she has directed productions at the Huntington Theater, Merrimack Repertory, Sleeping Weazel and Actors Shakespeare Project. She has also directed at Baltimore Centerstage, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, La Jolla Playhouse, the New York Shakespeare Festival, MCC, Primary Stages, the Long Wharf, ATL, People's Light, San Jose Rep, among others. Raised in Mexico City, Melia is fluent in Spanish and has translated and adapted multiple works, including the Langston Hughes translation of Lorca’s Blood Wedding. A winner of an OBIE award, she is Chair of the Arts Advisory Board for the Princess Grace Foundation and executive board member of the Society of Directors and Choreographers.
Why does the idea of the “perfect crime” intrigue us and how do the participants (criminal, detective, and victim) see it, plan it, act on it? There are core ethical and practical issues central to good crime fiction, and we’ll discuss them! Have these ethical and practical issues changed since Patricia Highsmith penned her 1950 crime novel, irrevocably altering the genre? The Hartford Stage production of Rope, based on the riveting crime thriller Rope’s End by Philip Hamilton - that also inspired Jimmy Stewart’s first film with Hitchcock in 1948 - opens up fruitful ground for our second session.