Same Look, Different Century
Know Theatre's "The Ravenside Occurrence" Has a Lot to Say
I assign diagnoses for a living.
Not because I believe that labels capture the full truth of a person—but because insurance companies require a code before they’ll pay for someone’s healing. So I am careful when I choose my words because I know that what I write on a form can follow a person. Define them.
I thought about that a lot during The Ravenside Occurrence.
Derek J. Snow’s world premiere at Know Theatre is set in London in 1876. Four women have escaped the asylum to which their families committed them, sheltering for the night in an abandoned inn.
These women were labeled as insane. Not because they were dangerous to themselves. Because they were a threat to someone else’s comfort. Or power.
Snow’s play is officially described as being about how racism and misogyny haunt the living. That framing is accurate. But I’d add something: it’s also about who gets to do the haunting—and how.
I am, demographically speaking, the person “the system” was built to protect. I know that. The asylum doctors of 1876 London looked a lot like me. So do people who today use invented clinical-sounding labels deployed to dismiss their political adversaries. To make dissent sound like illness.
Same look. Different century.
The ensemble at the center of The Ravenside Occurrence—Tierra London Rush, Abi Esmena, Meredith Frankie Crutcher, and Jordan Trovillion—navigates this terrain with remarkable physical intelligence. While the characters have a lot of dialogue, it’s how they communicate through their bodies that spoke to me the most. The way they show fear, the way they relate to one another, and in a magnificent moment at the end, the way they dance.
The set is enormous by Know standards, multi-leveled and immersive, built with such specificity that at one point I found myself staring at a corner and thinking: has that always been there? It hadn’t. It was constructed for this production—but that disorientation, that moment of questioning our perceptions–turns out to be exactly the point.
I will tell you plainly: The Ravenside Occurrence is a demanding piece of theatre. Snow’s script–under thoughtful direction by Caitlin McWethy–is working in multiple registers simultaneously. It’s part horror, part history, with comic moments and political commentary, and the production asks you to hold all of it at once. It’s a lot to absorb.
But here is what I keep returning to: I’ve never been dismissed as crazy by someone I’ve challenged or by someone whose authority I’ve questioned. I am a white man. My dissent reads as opinion. My discomfort reads as concern. My anger reads as passion.
For the women in this play, set 150 years ago—those qualities are listed as symptoms.
It happens in real life, too. In 2026.
That should haunt us all.
The Ravenside Occurrence runs through April 18 at Know Theatre of Cincinnati, 1120 Jackson Street in Over-the-Rhine. Tickets and more information are available at knowtheatre.com.
Kirk Sheppard writes about Cincinnati theatre—but mostly about being human. Check out kirksheppard.com for more information.