About the Project

Spite & Malice

A Postal Play by Chelsea Sutton
Part of Post Theatrical, national wave of postal plays
Created in memory of Marion Womble (6/14/26 - 12/5/2020)

This postal play is made possible in part by a grant from the City of Los Angeles, Department of Cultural Affairs and with the support Community Partners.

My grandmother, Marion Womble, died at age 94 at my mother’s home on December 5, 2020. After keeping her safe from the pandemic for many months, she and I both contracted COVID-19 on the first day the professional caregiver my mother and I had hired to help with Marion’s care came to start her time with us. The first day. I am grateful to this day that I was there, so my parents could be elsewhere working, so they did not contract it at the same time. It is still a miracle to me that they did not. I still feel guilty that I could not know that the caregiver would be sick, that I did not force her to be wrapped in bubble wrap, that I trusted someone who was supposed to be there to help. It is all so absurd that it feels like a true roll of the die - a chance of bad luck. A real shit situation.

We spent our last Thanksgiving together apart. She in the hospital, me quarantined in my apartment in LA. I felt hope when I could speak to her on facetime and she almost immediately insulted my hair (it was our thing) when my mother (who worked at the hospital) managed to see her.

We were lucky that we were able to get her home, that we were able to say goodbye, that we were able to be there with her when she passed. When so many others did not have that privilege.

We. Were. Lucky. And unlucky.

Luck has been on my mind.

Months before all of this, I was helping her downsizing her home. This had been an ongoing project since it became clear she could no longer live entirely on her own. When going through her things, I found over 50 packs of playing cards. I’d been talking with a group of folks about doing plays through the mail, and this seemed perfect. I could honor an activity we did together and tell a new kind of story.

Of course, the events of the end of the year changed the direction of the play. Or, at least, it’s heart.

There’s this Mary Oliver Poem I like. It goes something like this:

To live in this world

you must be able

to do three things:

to love what is mortal;

to hold it

against your bones knowing

your own life depends on it;

and, when the time comes to let it go,

to let it go

I had the very good luck to have Marion as my grandmother. I don’t use that word luck lightly. It’s only just occurring to me now that Grandma was teaching me about luck very early on in my life. The moment my hands were big enough to hold playing cards, she taught me a game called Spite & Malice. This game goes by other names that maybe don’t sound as cruel but I’m partial to this one. It’s honest. Because one of the main tenants of the game is to actively conspire to screw over the person you’re playing against. You want to win and make it impossible for them to win at the same time. I’d say maybe half of this game was strategy. The other half was all luck. There are just some things you can’t control. Sometimes it just wasn’t your game. We’d play for hours, getting more and more ruthless as I got older. But there were always moments of kindness built in. When we’d help each other because we were feeling magnanimous, or because neither one of us could win unless we were kind to the other at least a little bit. So in this way, she taught me how to be ruthless and kind in the same breath. In the same game. It’s the game she played her whole life.

I’ve said before that she was fierce. And I still feel like that word somehow embodies her. She ran the house when my grandfather was alive. She adopted a little girl. She didn’t wait to graduate high school before being a Minnosota-famous hairdresser. She left a small town and followed her heart in a time when it was much easier not to do that. She built businesses. She traveled the world. Her last trip was to China in her 80s. If she hadn’t fallen on that trip and gotten a little spooked about her impending physical limitations, I think she would have gone to Russia next. Or on Safari. Or to Antartica. Or the moon.

She was not just a grandma on holidays and happy times. She was a grandma all the time. We went through many versions of routines over the years. When I was little, it was the Camelot miniature golf course, and ice cream sundaes, and Watson’s malt shop, and Spite & Malice. Later, it became lunch at Katella Grill with a dessert Frappachino at Starbucks or McDonalds. I told her everything. I leaned on her. And she held me up.

So when it became clear in 2017 that she needed me to help hold her up, I was happy to do so. It is a strange thing to feel that shift from the one being cared for to the one doing the caregiving. I think my mom understands that more than I do. But that is what we do when we love people, right? We all eventually switch places. We all must have courage to love in different ways. Because life is ruthless – but the only thing that makes the game playable and worth your time is luck and kindness.

My heart is broken. I didn’t know it could break as intensely and as deeply as it had when I had to say goodbye to her. I feel suddenly so afraid that all my memories of her are running from me. I was arrogant enough to think I had prepared myself for this. Grandma was not a stranger to grief, and yet continued to make choices that favored living fully, finding adventure, being fierce, being kind, and even in the end, being hopeful. Hoping that tomorrow will be better. It’s maybe fitting that her last words were “We’ll see” during a funny inside joke between her, my brother and I. She was the best grandma anyone could ask for. And I was so lucky to have her, and to have her as long as I did. We all were. I’m having a hard time anticipating good days without my grandma. But I guess we’ll see.

Spite and Malice became a personal memorial for her. A way to tell her story without specifically telling her story.

The Set Up:
Spite & Malice is a theatrical fantasy adventure and interactive fiction that utilizes playing cards, audio drama, found objects, 1800-numbers and mail-based interaction to lead you through a tangled correspondence between the King, the Queen, and Jack, who are racing to win the longest-running card game in the universe. A rogue ex-player is breaking the rules as she searches the stars for her disappeared grandmother.You’re part of the game now. Good luck.

Here is how it worked:
1. Audiences would receive an envelope in the mail that included an Official Rule Book, a pack of 12 randomized playing cards, and 3 new character cards based on characters in the story. Plus a welcome note and an SAE.
2. Audiences were tasked with reading through the book, which would take them to webpages with notes and chats from the characters, audio notes, videos, and a special 1-800 number to call where they could learn more of the mythology of the world and leave a voicemail.
3. At various points the audience had to play one of the cards INTO THE UNIVERSE. This could be anything, from hanging it in a tree, turning it into confetti, throwing it away in front of an important building, or hiding it somewhere. Each play was intended to be done with intention so the cards could reach the granddaughter who was searching for her lost grandmother.
4. Audiences were asked to leave voicemails, text messages or send photos of their cards, and then mail 5 remaining cards back to the Rulemakers with a reason why they were chosen. Some photos were shared on the Slipped Beyond Stories Instagram.

The result of this scifi game over long distances and no live interaction, was quite powerful. Some played it lightly and just had fun. Others found themselves weeping, having not tapped into certain emotions for quite a while. Others felt suddenly connected to long-lost relatives. Some have not yet finished the game - which is okay. It was built to be done on your own time.

Receiving photos and notes and voicemails from audiences members, some I knew, and some I didn’t, created a strange sense of connection. When I first announced on social media that my grandmother had passed, the amount of people who DM-ed me to tell me THEIR story of their own loss - well…it just feels like we don’t do this kind of thing enough.

You can still call 1-866-208-1096 to leave a voicemail or listen to the story of the longest-running
card game in the universe.
For two secret voice mailboxes, press 6 or 7.

Spite & Malice is part fiction, part play, part twisted autobiography using found objects and audience interaction. It can be done on your own time, because time is strange these days. It deals with grief, because grief is also strange. It is seeking to find magic in the ordinary.

I want to invote Mary Oliver again with this poem. Because it has my grandmother’s spirit.

When death comes
like the hungry bear in autumn;
when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse
to buy me, and snaps the purse shut;
when death comes
like the measle-pox
when death comes
like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,
I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering:

what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?
And therefore I look upon everything
as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
and I look upon time as no more than an idea,
and I consider eternity as another possibility,
and I think of each life as a flower, as common
as a field daisy, and as singular,
and each name a comfortable music in the mouth,
tending, as all music does, toward silence,
and each body a lion of courage, and something
precious to the earth.
When it’s over, I want to say all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.
When it’s over, I don’t want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.
I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world.

I can say with confidence that she didn’t just visit the world.

She built a world. She was a world. She taught us how to do it ourselves.

We’ll see how we do.