![]() ![]() Her shoulders increasingly wore the burden of her family's fortune growing through the Civil War. Winchester's life turned in response to interior and exterior curses. Sarah was a special, smart woman, Palmieri testified - speaking multiple languages, capable enough to be called a musical prodigy. "There’s a lot of people who can’t - they shut down or break or combust."īorn Sarah Lockwood Pardee in 1839, this main character came into the world of the Winchesters at age 23, marrying William Wirt Winchester, the only son of the family behind the Winchester Repeating Arms Company. "It all leads me back to how boring our world would be if people didn’t make things out of the crises that happen in their lives," Palmieri said, before adding an important qualifier. Women especially build whole worlds from the materials of suffering. "I think I’m just really drawn to these women who are not 'in their right minds' when something as big as an idea like the Mystery House or 'Frankenstein' hits them and they can’t turn away from it," Palmieri said. The impulse to be all in, when the world fractures your attention, is compelling whether in or out of the theater. "Grounded" spent time with a pilot flying deadly, anonymous drone missions before returning home to cuddle her children "Dark Creation" explored Mary Shelley's impetus to pen "Frankenstein" from a place of profound grief and a deep-seated need for rebirth. Past productions have inhabited the lives of women living complex, distinctly demanding lives. These are the types of stories Palmieri tells. Sarah Winchester's story exists where crushing trauma and boundless creativity meet. More: What to know about Memorial Day fave Pedaler's Jamboree, a bicycle and music fest The woman inside the Winchester Mystery House And her play asks an important, too easily ignored question: When history gazes upon life and sees only a house, how can we come to know the woman inside - the one checking blueprints, staying up late, sleepless beside her ghosts?Īudiences can live alongside that question this week as GreenHouse builds "Winchester" in the second-story atrium of Missouri United Methodist Church. Palmieri wanted to understand what drove Sarah Winchester. The property's features include 10,000 windows, 2,000 doors, 52 skylights and 47 stairways and fireplaces, according to its website, some of which lead nowhere or somewhere altogether labyrinthine. ![]() The imposing mansion in San Jose, California is known for its scale and strangeness. Her original script revolves around the late Sarah Winchester, a bereaved heiress, a brilliant mind and a compulsive creator whose legacy is forever wrapped up in the iconic Winchester Mystery House. consider each unswept corner, each right angle, every way the light might fall, treating space as a collaborator.Īnd so Palmieri carried both empathy and heightened curiosity into GreenHouse's latest production, "Winchester," which opens Thursday. Want more? Sign up here to stay in the know.Elizabeth Braaten Palmieri knows what it takes to build a house inside out, a house no one else expected.Īs an actor, writer and director, she has led Columbia's site-specific GreenHouse Theatre Project to build houses of theater from galleries and wedding venues, on lakefronts and in living rooms. The candlelight (flashlight) tour lasts just over an hour and should be booked in advance. And yep, the new mystery room is already open for public tours. Evening tours are led by flashlight, and it's rumored that the home is haunted by a variety of ghosts. The Mystery House has 160 rooms, 10,000 windows, 2,000 doors, 47 fireplaces, 40 staircases, 13 bathrooms, three elevators and nine kitchens, many of which are open to public tours. October is a spooktacular time for a visit to the Winchester Mystery House. ![]() Inside the attic room, the mansion's preservation team discovered a pump organ, Victorian couch, dress form, sewing machine and various paintings. Frightened that spirits were the ones responsible for the quake, Winchester had the room boarded up. During the Great Earthquake of 1906, Winchester found herself trapped in the attic room. The new space has a pretty spooky backstory. According to Winchester, she received these home design directives from nightly seances in her elaborate Seance Room, and they were meant to confuse and ward off spirits (some say, the victims of death by Winchester rifles).Ī discovery of a new room in Winchester's sprawling mansion is exciting indeed. Winchester, often paranoid and in communication with the spirit world, had her construction team create staircases that lead to nowhere or doors that opened onto walls. The Winchester Mystery House was designed and used by questionably sane firearm heiress Sarah Winchester. San Jose just got even weirder: A new room has been discovered at a notorious South Bay Victorian mansion famous for its bizarre and senseless architecture. ![]()
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