Worcester Women's History Project sets the stage with "Someone Must Wash the Dishes"
Works of art often transcend time and so goes for Marie Jenney Howe�s satiric monologue, �An Anti-Suffrage Monologue.� Written roughly a hundred years ago, the piece still connects with women today. Though Howe writes of women�s suffrage, a right attained decades ago by women in the United States, the production still manages to bridge the distance between then and now. Directed by Warren Kliewer and starring actress Michele LaRue, the Worcester Women�s History Project (WWHP) will be presenting Howe�s witty piece at Worcester State University�s Student Center Blue Lounge on November 7.
Since its initiation, the WWHP has been committed to presenting Worcester�s history to the city�s inhabitants. Lisa Connelly Cook was a graduate student at Clark University, reading materials for class, when she found a surprising detail of Worcester�s history that she had yet to discover: The first National Woman�s Rights Convention took place in this very city in 1850. �Most people, when they think about women�s rights, they think of Seneca Falls, which was a regional convention in 1848. But it was such a success and the momentum was so great coming out of the Seneca Falls regional convention that they decided to have a national conference [in Worcester],� explains WWHP steering committee member and former president Heather-Lyn Haley.
Determined to share the information she found, Cook united with others interested in women�s history, and the nonprofit WWHP was born. In its earliest days, the mission was simply to spread the word about the first National Woman�s Rights Convention and focus on Worcester native and abolitionist/social reformer champion Abby Kelley Foster.
After a few years, the group decided to restructure and develop new goals. Among the fresh objectives was to have portraits of women included in Mechanics Hall, which up until that time only featured portraits of historical men. WWHP commissioned artists to paint portraits of historical women in the same style and quality, transforming Mechanics Hall to equally represent both sexes.
In 2000, WWHP held the enormous �Women 2000� conference at the DCU Center (then the Worcester Centrum). The conference brought forth women passionate about current issues women face, including the wage gap. Haley, who recalled cashing in a savings bond from her grandmother to buy her ticket, remembered how thrilled she was to be in attendance. �It was so good to find a community of people who recognized that women still hadn�t achieved equality and wanted to do something about it,� says Haley. �There was also this sense of women�s history happening in the moment, there in that room.�
One important piece of Worcester Women�s Oral History Project was the higher education collaborative. WWHP would work with professors from different schools in the area, including Clark Holy Cross, Assumption, Worcester State and WPI on how to include women�s history and oral history into students� studies. College students would set out in Worcester to perform and collect interviews for the project.
Collaborating with Worcester State University, which has previously had students collect oral histories for WWHP, Haley believes audience members will find much to connect with from the production of �Someone Must Wash the Dishes: An Anti-Suffrage Satire.�
�The performance plays with the idea that there were women against their own best interests then, and there are women that work against their own best interests now. Maybe they just don�t see the whole, big picture and maybe there is a way we can educate so they understand,� says Haley. Following the performance will be a panel discussion with Lee Bona, president of the Worcester League of Women Voters, Chantel Bethea, chair of the Worcester Status of Women Committee, and Parlee Jones, Shelter Advocate at Abby�s House.
For Haley, she hopes that the performance intrigues younger audience members and perhaps inspires them to become involved with WWHP. �I think we have a lot of knowledge within the group that needs to be passed along.�
Do not miss the opportunity to step back in time and reflect on the future. �Someone Must Wash the Dishes� will take place Thursday, November 7 from 6-7 p.m. at Worcester State University�s Student Center Blue Lounge, 486 Chandler St. Visit wwhp.org for future events and historical library.