Within the beloved library of her parents’ estate, a young Marie Kohler spent hours with her nose buried in special-edition copies of old books. And as the youngest of her siblings, she often entertained herself, particularly rummaging through the journals of Scottish biographer James Boswell.
Kohler was immediately entranced by Boswell’s voice. “He’s talking about his everyday life, and it’s totally honest – and illicit,” she says.
Unbeknownst to Kohler, Boswell’s journals would become the driving muse of her own adapted play, Boswell, decades later. “It’s as if he [Boswell] is writing [directly] to an audience, because it’s not clouded by the third person,” Kohler said. “Several of my plays have been built on journals. I’m very drawn to them.”
An early version of the show, Boswell’s Dreams, first appeared at Renaissance Theaterworks in 2005, followed by a revised production at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2019, before ultimately making its off-Broadway debut in 2022.
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“When it was at the Fringe in Scotland, someone from a New York theater came in and saw it and passed the work to the artistic director of that New York theater,” Kohler said. “It’s just one of those stories you dream about. They wrote me and said, ‘Would you be interested in bringing this to New York?’ I said, ‘Are you kidding me? Of course.’”
Kohler’s latest adaptation of the show, Boswell, follows American grad student Joan as she ventures to a Scottish noblewoman’s estate in the 1950s to research the writings of Samuel Johnson. Once there, she instead finds herself enticed by the intimate journals of Boswell.
The show is a “two-period dramedy” that interweaves parallel stories of friendship and hope, using contemporary character portrayals to engage a modern audience.
“Joan is [in] the 1950s, but if that person can open up to the audience, and you see through that person’s [eyes] – why they love something, or they’re afraid of something – then you have a much better chance of actually connecting to the material,” Kohler explains.
Kohler hopes the production leaves audiences with a renewed sense of appreciation for the past, and maybe even a newfound connection to the classical literature that inspired it. “The past can offer up extraordinary riches,” Kohler says.
With the play, Kohler hopes to “be a bridge” between established literature and contemporary audiences. “It’s kind of an educational impulse, or maybe it’s more sharing. Sharing my love of these books, this literature, and these voices with a dramatic audience. An audience. Any audience.”
Boswell is set to take the stage at Next Act Theatre in Milwaukee on Nov. 19 and will run through Dec. 14, 2025.
