In honor of the 100th anniversary of the passage of woman suffrage in New York State, the Geneva Historical Society's Spring Lecture Series will focus on Women’s Rights history. We will begin the series on Tuesday, March 28 with “‘Equal Rights by all means!’: Geneva's Role in Suffrage Drama” by Hobart and William Smith Professor Christine Woodworth.
On the afternoon of March 31, 1910, hundreds of people filled the Maxine Elliott Theatre in New York City for an afternoon of variety entertainment organized by actress Beatrice Forbes-Robertson in support of suffrage. The U.K. and U.S. suffrage movements converged onstage as British and American actresses performed three short suffrage plays originally produced by the infamous Actresses’ Franchise League in London. In the intervals between the plays, rousing speeches and satirical poems were delivered by figures such as Maxine Elliott herself and Harriot Stanton Blatch, daughter of Elizabeth Cady Stanton. The matinee generated over $1000 in donations and led the New York Times reviewer to assert, “If Equal Rights will result in many more entertainments as pleasant as the one arranged in aid of the Equality League of Self-Supporting Women at the Maxine Elliott Theatre yesterday, then Equal Rights by all means!” Much of the archival evidence of the 1910 suffrage matinee survives in scrapbooks compiled by Genevans Elizabeth Smith Miller and her daughter Anne Fitzhugh Miller.
Chris Woodworth will explore the Geneva connection to this suffrage matinee and reveal how the performance laid the foundation for future U.S. performances of British pro-suffrage propaganda plays. The program will conclude with a staged reading of one of the pieces included in the matinee. Performers will include HWS students and members of the Geneva community.
Chris Woodworth is an Assistant Professor of Theatre at Hobart & William Smith Colleges, where she primarily teaches courses in theatre history and directs. Chris is currently an HWS Fisher Center Fellow, exploring the 2016-2017 theme: “No Place Like Home.” Originally from Geneva, Chris has directed local productions for HWS Theatre, Geneva Theatre Guild, and Headless Sullivan Theater, as well as the 2014 Geneva Historical Society program From Beyond: Washington St. Cemetery Stories.
The second lecture of the series will be “Women on Wheels: How Gilded Age Women Found Freedom through Bicycling, Fought Against People Who Tried to Stop Them, and Why It Matters Today” on Friday, April 7. The Geneva Historical Society Lecture Series is supported in part by the Samuel B. Williams Fund for Programs in the Humanities. For more information about this program or the series call the Historical Society at 315-789-5151 or visit www.genevahistoricalsociety.com.
The Geneva History Museum is located at 543 South Main Street and is open Tuesday through Friday, 9:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. and Saturdays 1:30 to 4:30 p.m. Admission is free. Parking is available on the street or in the lot at Trinity Episcopal Church.
