Summer 2024 includes Aphra Behn’s, The Lucky Chance, directed by Julie Beckman. Julie makes her return to ISF having adapted and directed 2016’s audience favorite Jane Eyre. With at least eighteen plays to her name, Aphra Behn was England’s first professional female playwright. Almost all of her works were produced during her lifetime, while two premiered posthumously.In this iconic Restoration comedy, arranged marriages are the subject for despair. Two witty young ladies, Leticia and Julia, find themselves arranged to older out-of-touch gentlemen, Sir Feeble Fainwou’d and Sir Cautious Fulbank. Each woman devises plots to end their marriages and do receive their wish after the men admit they were too old to marry. Leticia is successfully reunited with her lover, Belmour. Unfortunately for Julia, Sir Cautious Fulbank must pass on before she can be free of his marriage bed. The play was extremely popular and one of Aphra Behn’s triumphs at putting women center stage.

This play was one of Aphra Behn’s last comedies before she passed. It is a condemnation of arranged marriage and older senile men forcing themselves on young ladies. The play held the stage for more than a decade and enjoyed a successful revival in 1718, showing how its themes continued to resonate with audiences. At a time when female actresses were allowed to take the stage, Aphra Behn was famous for capturing the woes of Restoration women in unwanted arrangements; a conflict normally ignored by her male counterparts. The play has been produced recently in updated versions.