The Back Cover

Hannah Stephenson

Jerome, Ami McKay

I don’t frequently read plays, but when I received a copy of novelist Ami McKay’s Jerome: The Historical Spectacle, the concept was so intriguing that I devoured it in one sitting. The two-act play is based on a mysterious event in Nova Scotia that took place over a century ago. The blurb on the inside of the jacket reads, “In the mid-nineteenth century a man who became known as Jerome was found on the shores of Sandy Cove, Nova Scotia, mute and missing both legs.”  Apparently, the man’s identity or personal history was never discovered, though many mistook him for a long lost relative or friend. McKay’s main inspiration for the play came from a newspaper article from 1899 proclaiming that Jerome would be “on exhibition;” fittingly, she sets the play within a circus sideshow. Jerome playfully fictionalizes a true event in order to explore the fragility and flexibility of identity.

Most fascinating about the play is McKay’s cast of characters. There are two narratives happening simultaneously (the discovery/investigation of Jerome and a sideshow exhibition), and McKay uses the sideshow “freaks” to tell both stories. In addition to Jerome (a “legless wonder”), the cast includes a shape-shifting ringleader, conjoined twins, a tattooed burlesque singer, a mermaid girl, and a three-legged man.