Rewriting the fall: Wayne State University theatre examines the cost of power in Erin Shields’ ‘Paradise Lost’

Audiences are invited to experience a bold adaptation that reinvents John Milton's epic poem Paradise Lost through a contemporary feminist lens, blending sharp wit, myth, and modern urgency to examine power, rebellion, and the complexity of good and evil.

Directed by Laura Quigley, MFA Acting candidate with a concentration in voice and speech pedagogy, the Maggie Allesee Department of Theatre and Dance at Wayne State University premieres Paradise Lost by Erin Shields April 17-26 in the STUDIO at the Hilberry Gateway. Tickets and additional information are available at onstage.wayne.edu.

For Quigley, the show offers a dynamic and intellectually charged take on a story embedded in cultural memory.

"I'm a huge fan of Erin Shields' work. Her writing is witty, playful, sexy, and always ridiculously clever," Quigley said. "With Paradise Lost, she takes a story that lives in our cultural DNA and flips the script, drawing each character through a feminist lens that refuses simple binaries - revealing how every figure holds both cruelty and compassion, power and vulnerability, and no one, divine or damned, exists as purely good or purely evil."

While the original epic is often framed as a meditation on free will, Quigley notes that this adaptation sharpens its focus elsewhere.

"While people often assume Paradise Lost is about free will, this adaptation reveals that its central question is about power: who has it, enforces it, resists it, and what it costs. That inquiry feels urgent," Quigley said. "The play invites us to examine authority, obedience, rebellion, and the structures that shape belief systems - questions that resonate deeply in our current social and political moment."

In its first weeks of rehearsal, the creative team dove headfirst into the epic scale and theatrical possibility of Shields' script.

"There's something electric about building a piece in a room full of artists who are curious, generous, and bold in their imagination," Quigley said. "We'll explore the physical and theatrical scale of this epic story, marry heightened language with embodied performance, and discover how sound and music can deepen the emotional and mythic landscape. It's a process rooted in play, rigor, and shared discovery. And that's where the most thrilling theatre happens."