This essay offers insights from workshops exploring Elizabeth Cary’s The Tragedy of Mariam in a range of contrasting sites. The Tragedy of Mariam has a slender performance history, a fact which arguably presents barriers to production and reception in traditional theatre settings. This lack of practice-based understanding makes future performance less likely, and consequently limits appreciations of the play. The workshops in four sites documented here create new lenses through which to view Mariam. By taking a performance studies approach, valuing what Carol Chillington Rutter terms the excess of meaning generated through performance of play-texts, this article aims to contribute performance and practitioner insights to the current Cary discourse.