Show: 22
Category: Comedy / Spoken Word / Storytelling / Audience participation / Historical content / Political content
By: David Alan Berger
Written by: David Alan Berger
Location: Rarig Kilburn Arena
Summary: The first four women elected to Minnesota's House of Representatives time travel to the present to give us hope in these uncertain times.
Highlights: This was an appropriate show to see the day after Minnesota's primary election, which resulted in two female candidates for Senate and the two female candidates for Governor, meaning that Minnesota will soon have its first female Governor, and it's about time! It all started in 1922, just two years after women finally got the right to vote, when four women were elected to Minnesota's House. This play starts in 1923 when they're arriving to start their jobs - the young and slightly boy crazy union organizer Myrtle Agnes Caine (Olivia Dubiel), realtor Sue Metzger Dickey Hough (Amber Payne), farmer and teacher Hannah Jensen Kempfer (Rachel Ratkowski), and businesswoman Mabeth Hurd Paige (Megan Rowe). They're visited by a time traveler from our times (Ann Frances Gregg), who explains the dire situation we're currently living in, and invites them to travel with her back to the future, to inspire people in a rally just when we need it most. And they do just that, finding humor and camaraderie along the way. But the most inspiring part of the rally-within-the-play are the speeches by the guest stars - real female members of today's Minnesota House of Representatives, the enduring legacy of these four pioneers. The play is a little pedantic and on-the-nose, the effect of the women's visit a little too rosy, but I'm OK with that. In the end it's inspiring and educational, and like Aaron Sorkin's West Wing or The Newsroom, sometimes we need stories that are aspirational in a time when reality is stark. This play provides hope that a better future is in store if we work for it, a future in which women are in the House, and the Senate, and the Governor's office, and the White House.
