A Song in the Wilderness at DeBartolo Performing Arts Center

A Song in the Wilderness, written by Larry Gard, is a 45 minute long one-woman show that offers a dramatic exploration of the life and experiences of Gene Stratton-Porter. Born in 1863, Mrs. Stratton-Porter was an accomplished writer of fiction and non-fiction. She was also a celebrated nature photographer, and an early naturalist. At the height of her writing career, she sold 5,000 books per day and was the first American author to be translated into a foreign language. It is estimated that, during her lifetime, she had over 50 million readers. She was also one of the first women to form a movie production studio. A Song in the Wilderness was first produced in 1993 as part of the annual Performances in the Humanities program of the Indiana Humanities Council, and starred Marcia Quick Gard as Gene Stratton-Porter. The show toured Indiana under the same banner during the spring of each year, through 1997. It was also produced for a festival about women in science at the Science Museum of Virginia in 2002, featuring the same actress, for whom this production is dedicated. Marcia Quick Gard performed the role on tour in Indiana each year from 1993 to 1997.