Photography by Alex Jenison

“Patricia and I were very impressed with the Madwomen performance last weekend! You created such a polished production! It was a wonderful pleasure to watch our words come to life!” Marian Partee, Book

Director's Note

During the summer of 2016, I had the fantastic opportunity to drive our country coast to coast by myself. I visited 23 states on my journey. Along the way I stopped at art museums, history museums, battle fields, theatres, National Monuments. I hiked in National Forests and dipped my toes in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. I learned about and experienced this country in a wonderful and new way. However, as I visited these museums, battlefields, and historical sites form our past, I was struck with how few stories there were being told about the women of our country’s history. I spent hours wandering museums and reading about the men that built The United States of America.
What about the women?
There is a saying in this country, “Behind every great man, there is a great woman.” We as a society tell the stories of the great men who have sculpted our country. We learn of their successes and we learn of their failures, but we learn very little about the successes and failures of the women who stood behind, beside, and up to them.
Then, I found myself thinking about the battles women in this country are fighting today. It seems for more than a century we have been fighting for equal pay and opportunity in the workplace, reproductive rights, and the end of sexual assault and violence against women. Aren’t these the same battles my mother, grandmother, and great grandmother fought?
Almost one hundred years ago, the women in this country stood up and fought for and won the right to vote. We learn in school that there was a women’s suffrage movement, but what are the specifics? How did they fight? What mistakes did they make along the way? How did they win? What did they think? I really do not know because our society does not really teach us about these women. Winston Churchill said, “Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” Is that what we are doing? By not demanding to know the history of the women who sculpted the United States of America and always putting the stories of men first, are we doomed to be in this cycle of fighting the same fights over and over again and never getting the results we desire?
What if the suffragettes could speak to us today? Could they give us the knowledge and wisdom to effect real change for women in this country? If we start telling the stories of American women now, can we break the cycle of repeating history? If we start learning from our past, can we change our future?