Sophie McIntosh's 'Benevolent': A Deep Dive into a Powerful New Play

Sophie McIntosh, renowned for her work on Macbitches, has penned Benevolent, a new play that plunges into the lives of four young women residing at the Inwood Benevolent Home in 1917. This reformatory, designed for 'fallen and friendless girls,' sets the stage for a narrative directed by McIntosh's long-time collaborator, Nina Goodheart. The play's setting is starkly depicted: a basement laundry room where the residents tirelessly scrub the most soiled linens, with a constant stream of new laundry descending from a center-stage chute.

Each of the four women finds herself at the Benevolent Home for distinct reasons. There's Abby, the youngest at 17, characterized by her spoiled demeanor. Emma, a more mature Black woman, works as a sex worker in a low-end establishment. Margaret, a white woman, has found work in more lucrative brothels. Lastly, Sarah, the most optimistic, resorts to panhandling on the Coney Island Boardwalk, a place she’s heard her father call “Sodom by the Sea.” As the play progresses, these women confront difficult truths about themselves and each other, gradually bridging the divides created by their differing ages and life experiences.

McIntosh and Goodheart are also the co-founders of Good Apples Collective, a theater incubator dedicated to amplifying stories of hierarchy, complicity, power, and abuse from queer and gender-marginalized storytellers. McIntosh emphasizes that a core tenet of their collective is the creation of "high-quality art without treating people badly." She states, "We are really just trying to make art with people we love in a way that is mutually supportive and sustainable."

In a recent conversation with Vogue, following the opening night of Benevolent, McIntosh discussed New York's historical reformatory homes, her continued support for content warnings, and her perspective on what makes a play "political."

Vogue: Could you tell us about the genesis of this play and how you first learned about New York's reformatory homes? What was the development process like?

Sophie McIntosh: I began writing Benevolent in the fall of 2024 as my graduate thesis project. The initial draft underwent a table reading and was quite different from the final version. My introduction to the institutions that inspired this play came from Cole Thompson, a local historian in Inwood. Thompson, who works in real estate, possesses a deep interest in local history and has published blog articles detailing the Magdalen Benevolent Society and the House of Mercy, institutions similar to the one depicted, which operated in Inwood from the late 1800s through the 1910s.