Under a laurel tree, four nymphs, or female nature deities, gather to celebrate a requiem. Once every 100 years, they get together to honor the nymphs that have passed away and remember their own history.
This is the premise of “Scream, Echo, Scream†a new play by Summer Baer that she’s staging at Metro Theater Company May 8-May 24.
“I was always fascinated with Greek mythology when I was growing up, but it came from a place of frustration almost,†Baer explains about the inspiration behind the play. “The muses and nymphs specifically are thanked for contributing to art, but we don’t really know anything about them.â€
Baer began writing “Scream, Echo, Scream†about muses. Those are nine goddesses in Greek myth that inspired artists.
“I wanted to write a piece that took those characters and put them at the forefront so we could learn more about them,†Baer explains. But the story morphed to be more about nature and nymphs.
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“The play had many different forms,†Baer says. “But the nymphs often traveled with the muses and were seen with them. Plus it allowed me to invent the world a bit more by not having such notable characters.â€
Each nymph represents a real place: Peyto is a lake in Canada. Ozark is Lake of the Ozarks; Socotra is an island in Yemen. Echo represents caves, but is also an echo and can only repeat what others say.
The play tells the story of these nymphs over five requiems or 500 years. As time passes, they look worse and worse with bits of trash clinging to their clothes. The icicles that were on Peyto at the beginning disappear.
The nymphs never mention climate change, but it looms in the background as they celebrate more and more lost nymphs every requiem. (The nymphs seem to die if what they’re the goddess of gets too polluted or changed by mankind.)
“I was really drawn to the parallels in both the degradation of the planet — and how people are shouting and yelling and we’re not listening to the warning signs when it comes to that — and feminism,†Baer says.
Both social justice issues, Baer argues, are misunderstood or even ignored. So she wanted to have the nymphs deal with not being heard. The play also talks about the importance of community. “The friendship that these characters share really comes to life when you see it,†Baer says.
The cast is all female with one nonbinary character, the Lake of the Ozarks. “I definitely wanted to highlight these feminine and nonbinary characters because I feel like, especially as a young artist in theater, that those opportunities aren’t prevalent,†Baer says.
She started working on the play in 2022. The Derby, Kansas, native came to the region to study at Southern Illinois University-Edwardsville and moved to St. Louis after graduating in 2018. This is her first full-length play, though she did have a short play in Slightly Askew Theatre Ensemble’s Aphra Behn Festival in 2023.
Baer received a grant from the Regional Arts Commission to stage her show, which she’s doing without a production company. She was inspired to apply after a workshop for the play where she got a positive response to it.
“I was really moved by (other artists’) reaction to it, and it just made me realize that I wanted to create opportunity for (not only) everyone around me but also for the play to be seen,†Baer says. “I just felt very passionately that this was a story worthy of seeing.â€
In addition to producing and writing the play, Baer will also take on the role of Echo, the character who can only repeat what others say.
“This play it’s interesting to watch and be in, because it does feel like four distinct versions of myself that I’m just getting to watch come to life,†Baer says. “And playing Echo has been really healing because Echo is … the ultimate witness to the story of these other nymphs and the planet. And so I was drawn to play her because that felt like the playwright version of me on stage.â€
The show also features a lot of music — there’s a song for the requiem — that Baer wrote, but that Bryn McLaughlin has enhanced with an original score.
“I leaned into the folksy side of (the music),†Baer says, since it is Ozark who plays the music. The songs were also “an homage to Greek tragedies and theater, because they would often use songs to tell the audience what (the play is) about.â€
Lize Lewy is directing the show, which will also feature Frankie Ferarri, Sarah Lantsberger and Kristen Strom.
“It feels a bit like we’ve built each piece of a machine and we’re finally getting to put the machine together and press the ‘on’ button,†Baer says. “That’s really exciting for us.â€
Post-Dispatch photographers capture hundreds of images each week; here's a glimpse at the week of April 20, 2025. Video edited by Jenna Jones.
