The Performances

Knowing Women by Suzanne Logan
February 14, 2004
8 P.M.
St. Andrew's Church, 163 Main Street in New Paltz
Admission $7
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Drawn from actual interviews with over forty women, all of whom lived into their nineties, Knowing Women was first developed by Ms. Logan within MMSC’s unique Readers Theatre workshop in the fall of 2003. The premiere performance was sold out and this encore performance features revisions based on audience feedback. Directed by Christine Crawfis, with Laurence Carr (MMSC’s Playwright-In-Residence) serving as dramaturg, Knowing Women’s women will be played by Ruth Berg, Elizabeth Askue, Ann Duthers, RoseMarie Navarra and Laura Love-Kroll.

Speaking about the origins of Knowing Women, Suzanne Logan says: “Several years ago, a photographer friend and I were determined to take a close-up look at old age. Accordingly, we began to travel the country, interviewing women in their nineties. We thought these interviews might make a book. For a number of reasons, the book never materialized, and the photos and interview transcripts were set aside; set aside, but not forgotten. The voices and faces of the more than forty women I had interviewed continued to haunt me. Obviously nearing the end of their time here on earth, they were the most incandescently alive individuals I’d ever met.’’

The five women selected from the original group to be portrayed in Knowing Women are:

Anna Fischer - German/Jewish emigre, a social worker, art collector

Pauline Thompson - teacher, nurse at the Battle of the Bulge, passionate devotee’ of 19th century poetry

Sarah Brady Moore - Kentucky sharecropper and mother of 10 or 12 (so many died at an early age she was no longer sure of the exact number)

Sophia Mumford - former suffragist and Greenwich Village bohemian, wife of one of the great minds of the 20th century, Lewis Mumford

Carrie MacDonald - waitress, Dust Bowl survivor.

“Diversities of opinion, background, frailties of body and spirit,” continues Logan, “these things, I think, were the charm of these women. Or maybe I mean their strength. They stole my heart, shook up almost every preconceived notion I had of old age, and sometimes drove me up a wall.”