DEEDS NOT WORDS
A radically inclusive and intersectional retelling of two Women's Suffrage Era satires: How the Vote Was Won & The Spirit of '76.
Director: Chelsea Anderson-Long
Performances February 8-16, 2019 at The Tank
As voting rights are being gutted and a women's right to choose is on its most unsteady footing in a generation, ETC. presents this evening of shockingly relevant Women's Suffrage Era satires. In the Pro-Suffrage How the Vote Was Won, working class Horace's world is turned upside-down when a household of lady-relatives arrive, demanding to be “supported”. Only when he is confronted with the idea of a future without women in the workforce does this anti-suffrage stalwart realizes the error of his ways. The Spirit of Seventy-Six; or, The Coming Woman, was written as anti-suffrage propaganda in the years after the Civil War, as the women's suffrage movement was gaining speed. It tells the “horrifying” prophecy of a future of female dominance, played for delicious irony. These plays are two hilarious examples of how theater can be used as effective tools to fight against encroaching civil rights violations.
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