Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening

In his latest collection of nine monologues, Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening and Other Plays, Nigro dedicates three—the title one, the fifth, and the ninth—to Anna Contessa, and the performer in all three is named Jasmine, a woman of 28.  In the first monologue, the woman says she likes being looked at but also finds it horrible.  She says she has been looked at and desired so much that she no longer knows who to trust.  When things get too much for her she remembers a woods near where she lived when she was a little girl.  She would go there to find peace and, in the early dark of a winter evening, she could hear the snow falling and she would think of her favorite poem and feel “this unspeakable, unearthly joy.”  But lately, she says, she can’t find that memory and is trying to find the door in her head that will open on to that memory and everything will be so still that you can hear the snow falling.