In 1915, two Davenport, Iowa, natives, Susan Glaspell and George Cram Cook, started a theater group in Provincetown on Cape Cod, Massachusetts, which turned out to have a profound influence on American drama forever. Many of the Provincetown shows featured a number of short scripts presented together in a single night of performance, and this program follows that tradition. For more information about the Provincetown Players, Glaspell, Cook, and their connection to the Quad Cities, visit www.genesius.org/provincetown-players.php

First on the bill today is that first play written by Susan and Jig, “Suppressed Desires.” In our performance, the role of Henrietta is played by Mattie Gelaude, her husband Stephen is played by Andrew Bruning, her sister Mabel by Jo Vasquez; the narrator is Kitty Israel.

The second play on today’s bill is a shorter script entitled “The Game: A Morality Play,” a highly stylized, symbolic meditation on the human condition by Louise Bryant, a journalist and feminist activist who arrived on the scene fresh from Portland, Oregon, brought out to the East Coast by a burgeoning love affair with Oregon native John Reed. He described her as “an artist, a rampant, joyous individualist, a poet and a revolutionary.” This script was written and first staged in the 1916, with World War I raging in Europe. The horror and ravages of war looming on the horizon, along with the personal dramas of romantic relationships such as that of Louise Bryant and John Reed themselves, were the large-scale and small-scale backdrops for the piece, which features a personified Life and Death, playing their game with the lives and deaths of human beings, such as the poet and the dancer who meet under their supervision. In today’s program, Life is played by Angela Rathman, Death by Mike Carron, Youth (the poet) by Andrew Calder, and the Girl by Brianna Gray; the narrator is Kathy Calder.

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