“Emily Mann is one of our most urgently engaging, provocative and significant American playwrights.”—Joyce Carol Oates

“Both as a socially conscious melodrama which arouses strong outrage in the viewer and as a valuable history lesson with contemporary relevance, Mrs. Packard is informative, lively and engrossing.” –Talkin’ Broadway

“Elizabeth Packard emerges as a vibrant, passionate force of nature.”—The New York Times

Illinois, 1861: Without proof of insanity, Elizabeth Packard is committed by her husband to an asylum. Based on historical events, Emily Mann’s play tells of one woman’s struggle to right a system gone wrong in this winner of the Kennedy Center Fund for New American Plays Award.



Emily Mann is a playwright and director. Her plays include Execution of Justice, Still Life and Having Our Say, among others. She is currently Artistic Director of Princeton, New Jersey’s McCarter Theatre—recipient of the 1994 Tony Award for Outstanding Regional Theatre. Her numerous awards for artistic excellence include a Guggenheim, a Playwrights Fellowship and Artistic Associate Grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, a McKnight Fellowship and a Rosamund Gilder Award for Outstanding Creative Achievement in the Theatre. In recognition of her achievements illuminating the possibilities for social, cultural and political change, Ms. Mann was awarded the Lee Reynolds Award from the League of Professional Theatre Women/NY.