It’s doubtful that you would think to put Emily Post and time travel in the same sentence, much less the same play, but RSVP, Glass Mind Theatre’s latest production, does just that. The show, half homage and half sendup to Miss Post’s Miss Manner’s persona, features homicide, high society, drunken sorority girls, cross-temporal love, and an education in etiquette, all in just an hour and a half.

Marcella Di Pasquale, Liz Galuardi and Lorraine Imwold as Mrs. Soandso, Mrs. Worldly and Mrs. Kindheart in Glass Mind Theatre’s RSVP at Area 405 running June 6-15. Directed by Ann Turiano. (Photo courtesy of Britt Olsen-Ecker Photography)

When audience members arrive, they are invited to fill out their calling cards, and then asked to wait until they are announced by a cast member to those already seated. The show, performed at the incredible Area 405 art space, actually takes place in that gallery’s back alleyway, a setting which sharply contrasts with the trellis on the main stage, bedecked with flowers, and the white linens that festoon the I-beams above the crowd. Cast members often break the fourth wall during the performance, interacting with audience members or delivering a perfectly timed line with a knowing look at those seated below.

The play riffs on some of the personae of Post’s seminal classic Etiquette, including Mrs. Worldly, Mrs. Toplofty, and Mrs. Kindheart, and introduces a few others inspired by the book, such as the young heir Winston P. Moneybags III and the honorable butler Jaundiced Pewter. It tackles racism, sexism and classism with a deft yet irreverent hand, and imagines just what would happen if a time machine brought members of 1920s Baltimore high society to a sorority house at a local university. Hilarity, chaos and murder ensue.

Kerry Brady and Liz Galuardi as Omega Mu Gamma (OMG) sorority sisters in Glass Mind Theatre’s RSVP at Area 405 running June 6-15. Directed by Ann Turiano. (Photo courtesy of Britt Olsen-Ecker Photography)

Etiquette and the subject of Emily Post attracted director Ann Turiano precisely because it’s difficult. “We looked at several texts in the public domain to inspire our devised process, and Etiquette was the one I couldn’t get a firm handle on – it just seemed so foreign,” Turiano said, “that’s generally how I work; I find the thing that I can’t resolve neatly in my head and then I know that there is something interesting to unpack and explore.”

Emily Post is often thought of as prim, proper, and often stuffy, yet Post’s own work grew out of scandal: in 1902 Post divorced her philandering husband, which, although technically legal, was considered quite a disgrace in 1900s high society. The incident inspired Post to write her book and create her Miss Manners persona. “For a long time, we wrestled with how to include Emily herself in the work,” Turiano explained. “Eventually, we started to incorporate her voice by putting her words into the mouths of the characters we were building… the book itself is full of interesting contradictions, just like its author.”

Vince Constantino and Justin Lawson Isett as Winston P. Moneybags, III and Rev. Bartholomew Soandso, Esq. in Glass Mind Theatre’s RSVP at Area 405 running June 6-15. Directed by Ann Turiano. (Photo courtesy of Britt Olsen-Ecker Photography)

Turiano and her cast started with many of the archetypes – and stereotypes – found in Emily Post and riffed off of them, spending days improvising. In order to turn Post’s massive book on manners into something resembling a play, Turiano recorded video of the cast’s improv sessions and took notes, which she later transcribed. “There were a lot of fragments being plugged in here and there and reordered every week,” Turiano said, “so there would be index cards on the floor and we would try to change the order and develop some kind of narrative arc.”

“We didn’t assign roles until very late in the process,” said Liz Galuardi, a founding member of Glass Mind Theatre. “We each have played almost all the roles in this show during different rehearsals, which I think gives us all a better collective understanding of the world we have created,” Galuardi said. “We also didn’t finalize our script until we were about three weeks out from opening, so it gave us all a chance to really play around with the characters, learn who they are, and what they want before being restricted by a script.” The devising process allowed the actors to have greater familiarity with one another’s roles and place in the story.

Lorraine Imwold as Mrs. Kindheart in Glass Mind Theatre’s RSVP at Area 405 running June 6-15. Directed by Ann Turiano. (Photo courtesy of Britt Olsen-Ecker Photography)

“Each of the characters we are playing are either inspired by characters that Emily Post writes about as archetypes in Etiquette like Mrs. Toplofty, Mrs. Grundy, Mrs. Wordly and others are characters that we created that seem to fit into this world, like Winston P. Moneybags and Jaundiced Pewter,” explained Galuardi, who plays Mrs. Worldly. That character is one of the most Post-ish of the bunch, speaking many of Post’s own words and acting as a ferocious guardian of and gatekeeper to high society.

Caitlin Bouxsein as Dominique, a social secretary, in Glass Mind Theatre’s RSVP at Area 405 running June 6-15. Directed by Ann Turiano. (Photo courtesy of Britt Olsen-Ecker Photography)

Galuardi feels that “on the surface [Mrs. Worldly] represents old-money aristocracy, and is someone who clearly does not approve of the ‘gradual deflection’ of manners in the younger members of high society.” However, Galuardi thinks that “at a deeper level, though, Mrs. Worldly represents the fear of institutional change.” In preparing for her role, Galuardi found herself “doing research on why certain people in our present day vote against gay marriage, polygamy and the legalization of marijuana” in addition to “arguments for prohibition back in the 1920s.”

The time travel device, which Turiano sees as “a nifty bridge between the modern world and the world of the book (which we’re calling Great Estates),” is especially apt in considering the parallels between 1920s society and our own. While the mores of the 1920s might, by our standards, be considered stiff and prohibitive, it was also a period of great social change, much like our own. Flapper and jazz culture clashed with Victorian manners and etiquette, and Prohibition created a network of speakeasies and rule breaking that would have horrified members of high society like Mrs. Worldly and Post herself. Yet while much fun is had when members of that high society make their way to a sorority party in 2014 and are astounded to discover the change in rules and culture, the play also makes the point that while much has changed, a lot has stayed the same. There are still rules and forms of etiquette, as when the drunken sorority members enumerate the house rules for their pledges. Yet these codes of conduct are largely unwritten – mostly just understood.

Kerry Brady as Mrs. Younger in Glass Mind Theatre’s RSVP at Area 405 running June 6-15. Directed by Ann Turiano. (Photo courtesy of Britt Olsen-Ecker Photography)

The play makes smart, incisive commentary both on when rules are proscriptive and when following established codes of conduct can actually make one a better person. Post herself admitted that following rules is ultimately less important than the morals behind them, a point that the play makes especially well in the characterization of Mrs. Worldly, but also in many of its other characters’ interactions with one another and the audience. “Etiquette must, if it is to be of more than trifling use, include ethics as well as manners,” Post wrote. “Certainly what one is, is of far greater importance than what one appears to be.”