Archive - 2006
"Intimations from the Brook"
Members of Director Mike Solomonson's Northland Pioneer College class, "From Page to Stage" adapted Susan Glaspell's 1928 novel Brook Evans for the stage as "Intimations from the Brook," which was performed April 22 - April 30 at the Silver Creek Campus Performing Arts Center in Snowflake, Arizona. On Saturday, April 22, 2006, Martha C. Carpentier gave an introductory lecture prior to the opening night performance; the following week on April 29 Linda Ben-Zvi attended and gave a guest lecture, both visits courtesy of Northland Pioneer College.
Director,
Mike Solomonson
Stage Manager, Monyca Stewart
Makeup Design, Lindsay Burgess
Set, Light & Costume Design, Debra Fisher
Light Board Operator, Kevin Hanson
Original Score, Benjamin Schoening
Adaptation by Elissia Johnston, Debe Sauro-Betts, and Mike Solomonson
Scroll down for photos of the production . . . In addition to those mentioned in captions, the cast included Marissa Decker as Mrs. Copeland, Deanna Bailey as Aunt Rosie, Lorie Williams as Mrs. Kellogg, James C. Thompson as Uncle Willie, Elinor Henderson as young Rosie, and Skyler Jayne as young Willie.
 Amy Ramsay as young Naomi (1888) and Donovan Stole as Joe. "It was as easy for them to laugh as for the brook." |
Amy Ramsay as young Naomi and Brian
McLane as her father. "You will marry Caleb!" |
 Charlotte Skousen as mature Naomi and Brittan Pyper as young Brook (1907). Mother and daughter make the yellow dress against Caleb's wishes. |
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 Charlotte Skousen as outcast Naomi, with Brittan Pyper as Brook, Breana Holladay as Mrs. Allen, and Malori Jo Rhinehart as Sister Waite |
 Lisa Jayne as mature Brook Evans (1927) and Barry Richins as Colonel Fowler |
Lisa Jayne as Brook and Gabe Sierra as Erik Helge. "We will see the sun rise in the forest!"
Luke Walton as Evans and Jeff Jones as his
grandfather, Caleb (1927): "Naomi, she lies buried here."
A Program Note from Mike:
"The majority of scholars
who are researching, writing, and rightfully resurrecting the
literary reputation of Susan Glaspell are women. So one might
ask how did I make a personal connection with Glaspell. In
part, and at the risk of sounding simplistic, I think it is because
we are native Iowans. When I read her plays, such as
Inheritors, I recognize a person who shared my Iowa experiences
and the challenges and quirks that result from living and growing up
in a small, rural environment. Part of the conflict that I
related to in reading her works was the contest between living the
conventional life (what young Brook might call doing the "right
thing"), and the realization of a more complex world beyond the
idyllic country. It is this world that offered opportunities
for greater self-fulfillment, but that demanded unconventional
choices. What often results in Glaspell's work is a war
between the desire to make the unconventional choice and the demand
that the "right thing" be chosen and honored. The tension
between these two standards is both a personal, internal struggle
that Glaspell's characters fight, and a battle imposed on her
characters by society and its various human representatives.
It is one of the thematic elements found in much of her work and
that informs her novel
Brook Evans, and inspired my desire to collaborate with
Elissia and Debe on our adaptation."
To read Martha Carpentier's introductory lecture click here:
Mike Solomonson and Martha C. Carpentier at
the Silver Creek
Campus Performing Arts Center, Snowflake, AZ
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American Literature Association
Susan Glaspell Society Sponsored Panel Trauma,
Grief, and Recovery Chair: Mary E. Papke, University of Tennessee Modernist artists of the 1910s and 1920s famously captured in their work the cultural trauma and mourning of those who lived through World War I. Susan Glaspell throughout her very long career focused on the legacy of that and other wars as well as on a number of other national political traumas and catastrophic individual losses. The range of trauma Glaspell explores is great, from the death of children (for instance, in The Verge), the loss of family (Fugitive's Return), the loss of self in madness or self-erasure (The Road to the Temple) to the loss of intellectual and political ideals (Inheritors) and the national trauma suffered in wartime (Judd Rankin's Daughter). This panel explored specific cases of personal and collective trauma, loss, and, in some cases, recovery in the drama and fiction of Susan Glaspell. Papers and presenters: "Glaspell, Freeman and Twain: Varied Voices in Magazine Fiction, 1913-1918," Colette Lindroth, Caldwell College "Embodied Loss: Absence and Presence in Susan Glaspell's Inheritors," Monica Stufft, University of California at Berkeley
"The Deracinated
Self: Immigrants and
Orphans in Susan
Glaspell's Fiction,"
Martha C. Carpentier,
Seton Hall University |
| JUNE - Linda Ben-Zvi's 2005 biography, Susan Glaspell: Her Life and Times, won the Special Jury Prize for Distinguished Achievement awarded by the Theatre Library Association which annually honors to an outstanding book in the field of theatre or live performance. The Awards ceremony took place on Friday evening, June 2, 2006, in the Bruno Walter Auditorium of the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, New York City. Linda, having already come to the U.S. several times in 2006, was unable to attend. Her award was presented by Martha C. Carpentier to Dr. William Priester, a native Iowan who collects Glaspell and Cook artifacts and publications, as well as that of other Iowan writers. |
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ATHE in Chicago, August 4, 2006 The American Theatre and Drama Society sponsored a staged reading of Susan Glaspell's Chains of Dew, directed by Cheryl Black, at the Association for Theatre in Higher Education Conference, featuring Cheryl's adaptation of the play with her prologue explicating the historical context and critical reaction to the original production, followed by a discussion. The performer / discussants were: Amy Pinney as
Nora
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Trifles in China
Students at SuZhou
University in China performed Trifles in October,
2006, directed by Alexander Moffet from Grinnell
University, as part of the 12th National Symposium on
American Drama and Theater.
The students performing in the above photograph are from Cast A
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Society for the Study of American Women Writers Conference
November 8 - 11, 2006
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