Turn on your television, read a printed article or go online. Today it is easy to inform oneself about voting rights and a woman’s right to choose. With both under siege, The Eccentric Theater Company presents Deeds Not Words. They believe now is the right time to retell two women’s suffrage era satires. This small scale production at The Tank reconsiders plays that would have been performed regionally in a time before radio. A note in the 1868 original edition for The Spirit of Seventy-Six; or The Coming Woman makes the point clearly. “This play is not written for the stage… but simply for amateur performances.”
Entertainment designed to push buttons and encourage thinking. Both of these short plays use broad satire as the vehicle to poke fun at the establishment. (Pun intended.) Clearly and loudly, these pieces champion a woman’s right to vote by ridiculing the status quo. Back in the time before radio, these short pieces would be one way to spread forward thinking ideas. How the Vote Was Won by Cicely Hamilton and Christopher St. John was one of the most popular and well known suffrage plays, first produced in 1909.
In her well-to-do London living room, Ethel Cole is fretting about working women going on strike for the right to vote. The government has said that women do not need votes as they are all looked after by men. Unfortunately for Mrs. Cole, the maids sign on to the cause and flee. How will dinner be served? When husband Horace comes home, raw meat is on the table. Making matters worse, previously self-employed women now turn up to be supported by their nearest male relative. Mr. Cole finds distant cousins at the door with their suitcases. A woman’s right to vote may be appealing after all!
Ariana Randolph Wormeley Curtis and Daniel Sargeant Curtis wrote The Spirit of Seventy-Six in 1868. The “supposed period of this play is the year 1876.” A future tale of horror indeed, not incidentally set at the one hundredth anniversary of America’s independence. Thomas Carberry returns home after spending a decade in China only to find a society where women are firmly in power. The men bemoan the past when their biggest problem was a lady’s dressing and spending. “When we had it good.” Apparently, “the ballot box has crushed the hat box.”
Character names are humorous such as tax assessor Mrs. Barbara Badger and Judge Susan Wigfall. Her Honor has to leave a conversation abruptly to hear a proposal from the Chair for the Suppression of Male Dinner Parties. What does the future look like? At election time, the women have no time to tend to babies. That responsibility falls to the men. Back in the day, this must have been raucous fun, especially read by a group in their gracious drawing room.
Directed by Chelsea Anderson-Long, both plays have been updated to 2036 and 2076, underscoring concerns over women’s rights in this century. The revisions are mostly additive such as the use of cellphones and the Chinese government’s suppression of news on the internet. This production is only running for two weekends. I enjoyed traveling back in time (or into the future) even if the staging is underdeveloped.
Satire is not easy to pull off. The actors, especially Hannah Karpenko (Ethel Cole and Barbara Badger), each have individual winning moments. More panicked frenzy might capture the hysteria felt in today’s America, the land which picked misogynistic Donald Trump as its President. Women are marching again and suffrage again feels like the stuff of rage.