Do Today’s Theatergoers relate to the “Age of Innocence?”

Playwright Karen Zacarías Talks About Today’s Gilded Age

Award-winning playwright and Washington, D.C., resident, Karen Zacarías, wondered why there wasn’t a successful adaptation of Edith Wharton’s book, “The Age of Innocence.” So, this talented playwright accepted the challenge to make it happen as she’s done previously with other books she’s adapted for the stage.

She began adapting Edith Wharton’s story of the gilded age a dozen years ago while she was the first playwright-in-residence at Arena Stage. Longtime Artistic Director Molly Smith was a mentor and inspiration. “It became an obsession over the past 12 years to adapt this complicated internal story of a romantic triangle set in a time that’s passed,” Zacarías said. It was a Pulitzer Prize-winning book by an American woman in the 1920s.

“This story spoke to me personally,” said Zacarías, a Mexican immigrant. She came to this country as an ‘outsider’ at age 10. “I learned about different rules, coming in and being confused about what things are. That’s something a lot of immigrants feel. I told a different story than other people would have because of my background and where I came from.”

The old Globe in San Diego commissioned her to complete the screen play; it was produced there last year. The revised three-plus-hour production is currently playing in the round at D.C.’s Arena Stage through the end of March.

“Adaptation is such a challenging and beautiful thing because you need to honor the original story,” says Zacarías. “I love Edith Wharton’s language, but you also have to find your way. It’s about triage in a sense. What do you leave out? What do you bring in?”

Zacarías uses the device of a commentator to lead the audience, a technique not so common in American theater today. “We, as an American audience in 2025, don’t know that it was considered improper at that time for a woman if she was speaking with a man to get up and go speak to another one,” Zacarías explained. “The narrator helps the audience understand the times when the play took place.”

“It’s shocking that we need someone to be our guide for that and to give us the wit and the depth of what is going on,” she explained. “Social mores change with the times, i.e., my kids told me the other day that if you leave somebody’s text unread, it’s a terrible thing — and even worse if you block them.”

Zacarías said that she didn’t try to modernize the story at all. “I keep it very much in the time it is because I think that tells us so much about the time we’re living in now.”

Although some in the audience may feel it’s dated in terms of language, costumes and sets, to the playwright “it feels very relevant.” She explained: “It’s about American culture. It’s about New York. It’s about the idea of what society is, a society that’s in flux and changing. The characters think they know what’s going on. And the language is exquisite. Edith Wharton is so witty.”

“It’s about money and power and how that part of society restricts liberties for other people,” said Zacarías, who strongly believes, “It has encouraged individuals to live on their own terms or speak out against that which has big social ramifications. It’s been really interesting that without changing the text at all, the story has a relevance today.”

She thinks it appeals to her kids’ 20-something generation because “it’s about ‘a screen beam romance.’ In San Diego, teenagers went crazy about the love triangle. We don’t get to see that in the same way. There are a lot of things that are said and left unsaid. Young people today do this same thing via text rather than letter,” she reflected. “Same thing; different format.”

The playwright feels this play has a resonance “because of whole idea of the love triangle and the little barbs that are happening underneath. The scandal of it really resonates with young people.” That’s an audience that in order to be successful theaters must attract, Zacarías added.

The biggest challenge for Zacarías was deciding what to cut. “I feel like by the second act, people are understanding the rules and starting to be shocked by certain things,” she said. “The fun thing is watching the audience learn along with the characters. The characters are being watched by other characters and by the audience who become society. So, we become a little bit complicit in the judging of these people. I thought that was a very fun thing to play with. And then it’d be part of the society.”

“What I love with the play being in the round is what we all become, the whole time there’re opera boxes,” Zacarías continued. “And all of these characters are constantly being watched by other characters and also by us, the audience. We become society. Everyone’s watching whether from the opera boxes or the audience. There is no such thing as privacy. That’s even more relevant today. People know your business, whether you’re getting divorced or going bankrupt.”

In addition to Molly Smith, who boosted Zacarías’s career by naming her artist-in-residence at Arena Stage, Zacarías feels fortunate to have had many mentors starting with her parents who believed that “a life in the arts, as hard as it was, was worthy.”

She comes from an artistic family in Mexico. Her grandfather was a well-known movie director. As a youngster in Mexico, she and her cousins put on plays, always encouraged by supportive family. That’s why when she came to Washington, D.C., after college, she started the Young Playwrights Theater. “I feel all kids need to celebrate and access their own imagination.” Her own three children went to Duke Ellington School of the Arts, and her daughter is now an animator and filmmaker.

When asked about her thoughts on the future of the arts in D.C. and the country, Zacarías replied, “There’s this idea of censorship happening right now. It’s happening at the Kennedy Center, but I think independent institutions like Arena need the support of funders. It’s always been when regimes get more autocratic and more repressive, the arts are a leader in speaking up against them.”

She reflected on “The Age of Innocence.” “What I like a lot about this play is that it’s about courage,” Zacarías said. “It’s about women deciding that even if everyone’s judging them, they’re going to try to find happiness and be true to themselves.” She added, “I think as people start to speak up against things they think are unjust or unfair — as scary as it might seem and as much pressure as there will be to silence people — the arts are the first bastion for freedom of speech.”

“Every writer has an unanswerable question. No matter what play or book they’re writing, it shows up,” she said. “There’s always a decision and there’s always a sacrifice. It’s about struggling with time and priorities. My life would be easier if I didn’t want to be an artist for sure but not as interesting. It would have been easier if I had really loved widgets, but that’s not how life turned out to be.”

When asked, what do you want people to take away from this play? Zacarías replied: “I want the audience to have a wonderful night at the theater. I want them to feel like this is a story. They should dress up, turn off their phones and just really immerse themselves in the world of it. And then I think they should leave and think about moments where they were courageous or what is holding them down.”

So, does she ever see us going back to that gilded society in D.C.? “Some say this is going to be the ‘new gilded age.’ That is not a compliment.,” Zacarías said. “The power is being concentrated and very few, very rich people who want to control what’s said. It’s different from what they had in Wharton’s time. It’s a time where people go in spaceships for a weekend with girlfriends or they bring Katie Perry up there. It’s a different kind of wastefulness. In the gilded age, at least there was a concentration on beauty. That no longer exists. Look at the wardrobes. I would say the gilded age we’re coming upon is some corruption, concentration of wealth and power and a navel-gazing society where people aren’t thinking of the gifts or thoughts of others. I think we’re about to enter another form of gilded age, it’s not going to be so pretty.”

Having been produced around the country, Zacarías is currently working on a musical with Gloria Estefan. Still untitled, it’s expected to have a regional premiere soon and hopefully move to Broadway. It’s an original book, a true story about kids from Paraguay who build their own symphony instruments out of trash. Zacarías visited the kids who live in a landfill.

“I can’t tell you just yet. But hopefully from there, it will move to Broadway,” the playwright revealed. “I’ve always wanted to do a big, fat Broadway musical.”