The Penn’s Village Players are back with “Trifles,” first performed by the Provincetown Players at the Wharf Theatre in Provincetown, Massachusetts, on August 8, 1916. The play is loosely based on the murder of John Hossack in 1900, and the subsequent arrest and trial of his wife for the killing. The play is frequently anthologized in American literature textbooks, because of the playwright’s use of the new mystery genre: all members of the audience come to understand each piece of the puzzle through the perspectives of the women sleuths as they grapple with the evidence.

Susan Keating Glaspell and her husband George Cram Cook founded the Provincetown Players, the first modern American theatre company. First known for her short stories, Glaspell also wrote nine novels, fifteen plays, and a biography. Her 1930 play Alison's House earned her the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. She was also noted for discovering playwright Eugene O’Neill. Glaspell is today recognized as a pioneering feminist writer and America's first important modern female playwright. Her one-act play Trifles is frequently cited as one of the greatest works of American theatre.