Terry Baum to Star in Crackpot Crones' 'HICK: A LOVE STORY', 1/2-25
By: BWW News Desk Dec. 12, 2014
Tickets can be reserved via email, online at www.brownpapertickets.com/event/896594 or by phoning 800-838-3006. For more info on HICK, call 415- 206-1951.
Technical credits include: Set design by Vola Ruben, lighting design by Stephanie Anne Johnson, costuming design by Maria Graham. The stage manager is Christine Plowright. This is the first co-production for The Crackpot Crones and Lilith Theater.
HICK: A Love Story explores Lorena Hickok's life, and her love relationship with Eleanor Roosevelt (ER). When the play opened on July 10, 2014, few people had ever heard of ER's "First Friend," as Lorena Hickok was called by the press. That changed in Oct. 2014 with Ken Burns' TV documentary, "The Roosevelts." Burns acknowledges the friendship but ignores the evidence in their letters of a lesbian relationship.
Baum says, "Why would Eleanor write 'I ache to hold you close' if they weren't lovers? I love my women friends, but I've never ached to hold them close!"
To reconstruct the truth of the relationship between the patrician First Lady and the charming butch reporter, the playwright traveled to Hyde Park, NY to study original documents, including ER's letters, in the "Lorena Hickok" files at the FDR Library. She also interviewed people who actually knew Hick. Hick was the most famous woman journalist of her day and the first woman to have a byline on the front page of the NY Times. She met ER during FDR's first Presidential campaign in 1932. She convinced her editor that this particular candidate's wife was worth her own reporter, and was assigned to the job herself. The love affair between the patrician First Lady and the charming, hard-living butch reporter lasted several years. Their friendship lasted Mrs. Roosevelt's lifetime. Hick helped Mrs. Roosevelt become an outspoken, media-savvy activist for democracy and human rights -- one of the greatest women of the 20th century.
Of the letters the First Lady wrote to Hick, 2336 survive, beginning in 1933 and only ending with ER's death in 1962. These letters were discovered in 1978, when a researcher opened 18 boxes willed to the FDR Library by Lorena Hickok. The letters document a passionate lesbian relationship between Hick and ER in the early years of their friendship - and a deep connection that last ER's lifetime.
In HICK: A Love Story, Baum uses direct quotes from Hick's writing, Eleanor Roosevelt's letters, and a scene from Pat Bond's 1985 play about Hick. Mrs. Roosevelt's letters are read verbatim by actress Paula Barish. Baum brings Hick to life - as the renowned journalist, important chronicler of the Great Depression, and lover and "First Friend" of First Lady, Eleanor Roosevelt.
BIOGRAPHIES:
Terry Baum (Playwright & Actress): Baum, a pioneer lesbian playwright, has toured internationally as a solo performer. Most recently in 2013, Baum toured South Africa with her play, Lesbo Solo! She has had her plays published, produced all over the world, and translated into French, Dutch, Italian, and Swedish. Dos Lesbos (1981, with Carolyn Myers) was the first time many lesbians saw their lives accurately portrayed in the media. It inspired the first anthology of lesbian plays (Places, Please, 1985). Baum has toured the U.S., Canada, Europe and Israel as a solo performer. Two of her short films have been shown at the LGBT Film Festival, San Francisco (1997, 2007). Baum ran for Mayor of San Francisco in 2011. She made a difference and had a good time. Pat Bond (Playwright) Pat's career was launched by her appearance in the landmark documentary about gay people, Word is Out, in 1973. This lesbian actress, writer, and comedienne toured the country in the 70's and 80's, telling stories about her life as a dyke in San Francisco in the 50's, and as a WAC in the army during a witch hunt against lesbians after World War II. For thousands of gay people, Bond was the first out lesbian they had ever seen onstage. Bond wrote and toured solo shows on Gertrude Stein and Lorena Hickok. Pat Bond had had a crush on Eleanor Roosevelt since the age of seven. It was the fulfillment of a life-long passion to play Lorena Hickok.
Carolyn Myers (Director) Carolyn directed her first original play at age 8, and has not stopped since. She has been an active member of four theatre companies: The Isla Vista Community Theater; Lilith Women's Theatre in SF; Mixed Company Theater in Ashland, Oregon; and The Hamazons, warrior princesses of comedy, an improv troupe. For 15 years, she directed Planned Parenthood's Teen Theatre in Southern Oregon, for which she received state, regional, and national recognition.
The Crackpot Crones: Terry Baum and Carolyn Myers are pioneer funny feminists who have been performing sketch comedy, improvisation, and original plays since 2008. The Crackpot Crones have performed in California, New York, Oregon and New Mexico. They have been part of the Women on the Way Festival, the National Queer Arts Festival in San Francisco, the "Lesbians in the 70s" conference at CUNY, the Santa Cruz Fringe Festival and the NY Int'l. Fringe Festival. In 2011, the Crones ran for Mayor of San Francisco, with Terry as candidate and Carolyn as aide-de-camp. In 2013, they produced four shows, including Crackpot Crones meet The Bride of Lesbostein and Crones for the Holidays: The Sequel.
Lilith Theater: The Bay Area's internationally reknowned women's theatre of the 1970s and 1980s, was founded in Berkeley, California in 1974, by Terry Baum, Charlotte Colavin, and Shelley Fields. Moving to San Francisco in 1976 and continuing through 1985, it produced collectively created original plays: Lilitheatre, Good Food, Moonlighting, Sacrifices, Exit the Maids, and productions by women playwrights: Pizza, by Michele Linfante, Manifesto by Dacia Maraini, The Daughters of Erin, by Carolyn Myers and Elizabeth Roden. A touring company at European and American Theater Festivals, Lilith also gave an impromptu performance during a ferry strike, and was caught in the Mt. Saint Helens eruption. Now, after a hiatus of a few decades, Lilith Theater returns to the Bay Area theater scene with its production of Terry Baum's solo play: Hick: A Love Story.
Pictured: Terry Baum as Lorena Hickok in Hick: A Love Story - The Romance of Lorena Hickok & Eleanor RooseveltJan. 2 - 25, 2015 - The Berkeley City Club in Berkeley. Photo by Lynne Fried.
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