Review: "The Popess" Looks Back to Spotlight Forward-Looking Women

The Popess: Instructions for Freedom

Written and performed by Elena Mazzon

Directed by Colin Watkeys

Presented at Casa Italiana Zerilli-Marimo’ at NYU (24 W 12th St., Manhattan, NYC), May 9, 2025, and Culture Lab LIC (5-25 46th Ave, Queens, NYC), May 10, 2025

Elena Mazzon. Photo by Luigi Russo
As everyone debates what the ideological leanings of newly selected Pope Leo XIV may be, the serendipitously timed New York performances of Elena Mazzon's solo show The Popess: Instructions for Freedom, remind us that however progressive the new Pope may turn out to be, the institution of the Catholic Church remains (like many others) staunchly patriarchal. The Popess, which debuted in London in 2024 and has since been performed across the United Kingdom, including at Edinburgh Fringe, as well as in Italy, is based on a true story from more than 700 years ago that highlights both the importance of telling the stories of revolutionary women and the ways in which we are still fighting many of the same battles for gender (and other kinds of) equality as the medieval subjects of Mazzon's play. Mazzon has called London home since 2006 but was born in Italy, and the Milan-set Popess is currently part of the 2025 In Scena! Italian Theater Festival, which runs from May 5th through 18th, with performances in all five boroughs, almost all of which are free with an RSVP.

The Popess in question is noblewoman Maifreda Pirovano (?-1300), who had chosen the life of a nun before being appointed by Guglielma of Bohemia (1210-1281/82), who had accumulated followers who accepted her as the incarnation of the Holy Spirit, as Guglielma's Popess. The Guglielmites came from all levels of Milan's social strata, believed in the fusion of the masculine and feminine, and anticipated the coming of a church led by women. As Popess, the play reveals, Maifreda preached, said mass, and gave communion, all prohibited to women (then and now). The protagonist of The Popess, though, is not Maifreda herself–although she does make an appearance–but rather an unnamed everywoman, daughter of a merchant, who was a pious follower of the Catholic Church before she became a Guglielmite (and so, in the Church's eyes, a heretic). Contributing to her embrace of Maifreda are both the Church's own failure to give her the answers, support, and guidance that she seeks and a friend who, though more interested in social and even romantic opportunities of various gatherings, exposes our everywoman to alternatives to the "proper" church. But where there are heretics, of course, the Inquisition is never far behind.

The play's narrative underscores the hypocrisy endemic to an institution whose officials, for example, preach poverty while amassing wealth, including through selling forgiveness (not unlike contemporary neoliberal governments). Mazzon's everywoman can certainly be moving, but the play also makes liberal use of humor throughout; and alongside some minimal costume or lighting changes, Mazzon uses different class-inflected contemporary accents as an effective (and often funny) means to delineate and characterize different characters. Moreover, like the Popess refused to be contained by the imposed norms of her day, Mazzon refuses to be restricted to the stage, and periodically gets up close and interacts with the audience. One such interactive moment uses song to enact the same sort of community-building offstage that the narrative explores onstage. When Mazzon's everywoman expresses her intention to keep talking about Guglielma and her followers, preventing them from disappearing from the historical record, and to keep planting seeds of hope, she might be describing what The Popess itself accomplishes.

-John R. Ziegler and Leah Richards

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