{"id":2031526,"date":"2025-09-18T12:21:36","date_gmt":"2025-09-18T12:21:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/?p=2031526"},"modified":"2025-09-18T12:21:36","modified_gmt":"2025-09-18T12:21:36","slug":"colorado-play-reimagines-sherlock-holmes-watson-as-women-arts-entertainment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/colorado-play-reimagines-sherlock-holmes-watson-as-women-arts-entertainment\/","title":{"rendered":"Colorado play reimagines Sherlock Holmes, Watson as women | Arts & Entertainment"},"content":{"rendered":"

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It\u2019s spring of 2021 in London, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle\u2019s famous sleuth and sidekick are about to meet.<\/p>\n

But this time they\u2019re women.<\/p>\n

In playwright Kate Hamill\u2019s \u201cMs. Holmes & Ms. Watson, Apt. 2B,\u201d Dr. Joan Watson, a recent divorcee, absconds to London after her perfectly ordered life has collapsed due to the pandemic. There she meets Sherlock Holmes, a genius, loner detective, the Felix to her Oscar, the yin to her yang, and the two become roommates and buddies.<\/p>\n

The comedy kicks off the Fine Arts Center Theatre Company\u2019s new season with previews Thursday and Friday at Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center at Colorado College. The show opens Saturday and runs through Oct. 5.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe play is packed with our collective longing to have fun with other people that we were experiencing in 2021,\u201d said director Katy Walsh. \u201cBoth are surprised to find themselves in a friendship. It\u2019s also the story of how we become friends and in relationships with people who make life more fun. And it just so happens that daily life for them is solving crimes.\u201d<\/p>\n

While the cast is small, with Prentiss Benjamin and Jessica Austgen playing the leads and two other actors (Johanna Carlisle-Zepeda and Nicholas Robert Ortiz) playing at least three roles apiece, the crimes keep coming, including a man found murdered in a motel room, until the duo face down a villain who threatens to break their winning streak.<\/p>\n

Hamill is known for her feminist, female-centered adaptations of classic works, including Jane Austen\u2019s \u201cSense and Sensibility\u201d and \u201cPride and Prejudice,\u201d Nathaniel Hawthorne\u2019s \u201cThe Scarlett Letter\u201d and \u201cDracula: A Feminist Revenge Fantasy, Really,\u201d her version of Bram Stoker\u2019s \u201cDracula.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\u201cHer plays are very actor-centered,\u201d Walsh said. \u201cThey move fast so they\u2019re a fun challenge of how we jump from moment to moment. And I love how she centers complicated women in her stories so it feels like there are a lot of different aspects to them. It makes it rewarding to work on as a woman.\u201d<\/p>\n

Austgen, who plays Watson, was a fan of the Sherlock canon. To prepare for the role she reread a few of the stories, but also garnered inspiration from a more unlikely place: \u201cThe Pitt,\u201d a fast-paced medical procedural on HBO Max.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was telling my husband she had this COVID-19 experience working in the ER,\u201d Austgen said. \u201cHe asked if I\u2019ve watched \u2018The Pitt.\u2019 So I jumped in and found Noah Wylie\u2019s character arc similar to what Watson experienced.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Benjamin was a bit intimidated to play the iconic Holmes, she says. To prepare, she refamiliarized herself with the stories she read when she was young and got acquainted with other activities Holmes does in the play.<\/p>\n

\u201cI took a little bit of fencing and watched a whole bunch of BBC English dramas and mysteries,\u201d she said. \u201cFor a play like this you want to be loose and relaxed because it\u2019s like an amusement park ride, where you get on board and it doesn\u2019t stop until the very end.\u201d<\/p>\n

More than 100 years since the introduction of Holmes into the lexicon, it still seems he and Watson are as popular and reimagined as ever.<\/p>\n

\u201cI suspect we all wish we were Holmes in some ways, as sharp as he is, and we wish we had all the answers, which Holmes often seemed to do,\u201d Walsh said. \u201cWe also like a character like Watson who brings the human side to Holmes and helps to balance them out. Holmes is a tortured genius and most of us know we\u2019re not geniuses. We like to see that crazy genius does need an ordinary person and that we have something to bring to the table.\u201d<\/p>\n

Contact the writer: 636-0270<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

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Contact the writer: 636-0270<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n

\u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source gazette.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s spring of 2021 in London, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle\u2019s famous sleuth and sidekick are about to meet. But this time they\u2019re women. In playwright Kate Hamill\u2019s \u201cMs. Holmes & Ms. Watson, Apt. 2B,\u201d Dr. Joan Watson, a recent divorcee, absconds to London after her perfectly ordered life has collapsed due to the pandemic. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2031527,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[364196,21792,22442,374765,374755,374757,307825,374750,360724,21917,374762,307824,374764,374751,374758,374752,374761,374756,374753,374759,374763,364200,374760,358576,374754],"class_list":["post-2031526","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","tag-arthur-conan-doyle","tag-arts-and-entertainment","tag-arts-entertainment","tag-bram-stoker","tag-colorado-college","tag-colorado-springs-fine-arts-center","tag-coloradosprings-com","tag-dr-watson","tag-dracula","tag-hbo","tag-jane-austen","tag-jennifer-mulson","tag-jessica-austgen","tag-joan-watson","tag-johanna-carlisle-zepeda","tag-kate-hamill","tag-katy-walsh","tag-nathaniel-hawthorne","tag-nicholas-robert-ortiz","tag-noah-wylie","tag-prentiss-benjamin","tag-pride-and-prejudice","tag-sense-and-sensibility","tag-sherlock-holmes","tag-the-scarlett-letter"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/Colorado-play-reimagines-Sherlock-Holmes-Watson-as-women-Arts.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2031526","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2031526"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2031526\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2031527"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2031526"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2031526"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2031526"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}