On July 30, 2024, New Athens Players presented a night of readers' theater, open to the public, entitled "Susan Glaspell and Friends." The program including two short plays by Glaspell, and one each by Djuna Barnes and Edna Ferber. The acoustics were not optimal, and one short part had to be re-recorded, but the result is still a fairly good reflection of the night's readings. They will be released one by one on this podcast in order of presentation on the program. Program notes have been recorded and added at the beginning of each piece.

This third piece on the program, Edna Ferber's play, "The Eldest" (1920), was performed by the following in order of appearance: Mark Garden (Narrator); Julia Sears (Rose); Pamela Briggs (Neighbor); Dee Canfield (Ma); Michael Carron (Pa); Noah Stivers (Al); Sophia Kilburg (Floss); Dan Haughey (Henry Selz).

On July 30, 2024, New Athens Players presented a night of readers' theater, open to the public, entitled "Susan Glaspell and Friends." The program including two short plays by Glaspell, and one each by Djuna Barnes and Edna Ferber. The acoustics were not optimal, and one short part had to be re-recorded, but the result is still a fairly good reflection of the night's readings. They will be released one by one on this podcast in order of presentation on the program. Program notes have been recorded and added at the beginning of each piece.

This first piece on the program, Barnes's play, "At the Roots of the Stars" (1917), was performed by the following in order of appearance: Dan Haughey (Narrator); Dee Canfield (Mageen); Pamela Briggs (Maze); Julia Sears (Travna).

On July 30, 2024, New Athens Players presented a night of readers' theater, open to the public, entitled "Susan Glaspell and Friends." The program including two short plays by Glaspell, and one each by Djuna Barnes and Edna Ferber. The acoustics were not optimal, and one short part had to be re-recorded, but the result is still a fairly good reflection of the night's readings. They will be released one by one on this podcast in order of presentation on the program. Program notes have been recorded and added at the beginning of each piece.

This first piece on the program, Glaspell's play, "Woman's Honor" (1918), was performed by the following in order of appearance: Michael Carron (Narrator); Mark Garden (The Lawyer); Dan Haughey (The Prisoner); Sophia Kilburg (The Shielded One); Dee Canfield (The Motherly One); Sara Kutzli (The Scornful One); Jane Simonsen (The Silly One); Noah Stivers (The Sheriff's Boy); Pamela Briggs (The Mercenary One); Julia Sears (The Cheated One).

In "A Matter of Gesture," Susan Glaspell turns her human empathy and critical eye on a character embroiled in the radical politics of the bohemian circles Glaspell was familiar with: the world of Max Eastman, John Reed, The Masses, and the IWW. The character's last name, "Ruhl," will be familiar to residents of Davenport and its environs, especially because of a locally prominent real estate company, and also to fans of contemporary theatre, on account of Sarah Ruhl, author of Eurydice and other well-regarded plays (and yes, there's a Davenport connection there too) -- but the story does not appear to be based on a specific character from real life. (The dangers of labor politics and debates over whether violence could be justified, and of course the ever-present threat of prison or other forceful actions by the authorities, were very real to Glaspell and her friends. The fate of Patrick Quinlan, one IWW leader who was put on trial in the aftermath of the 1913 Paterson Silk Strike, is worth comparing, although it does not track with Harry Ruhl's story in detail.) The short story concludes in a desolate area of Cape Cod to which Glaspell frequently returned in her works, most notably in her play The Outside. "A Matter of Gesture" was originally published in McClure's Magazine in August 1917.

Susan Glaspell's story looks at isolation and interconnectedness both in the practice of farming and in human relationships. Young Ira Mead is at first sufficiently described by others in the following terms: “If you don’t say anything to him, he won’t say anything to you.” Over the years, the very corn he plants, experiments with, and wins prizes with, brings him to a place of deeper understanding and peace. The story was originally published in Harper's, March 1919, pp. 446-51.

Susan Glaspell re-wrote the story of her most famous one-act play, Trifles (first performed in 1916), for publication as a short story. This is a tale of mystery, set in the aftermath of the murder of John Wright, as his widow Minnie is being held in prison on suspicion of the murder of her husband. The situtation is based on a true incident Glaspell had reported on in Des Moines. Glaspell's telling, both in the play and in the short story, focuses on the solidarity and sympathy between two other women in the community, and their growing understanding of the unremittingly bleak situation in the Wright household, while in the background, their husbands tramp around looking for "clues" to help the county attorney. The short story was originally published in March 1917, and was then reprinted in The Best Short Stories of 1917, which changed the ending just slightly, but significantly; it has been followed in this change by most anthologies since. This version, like that printed in Bryan and Carpentier (eds.), Her America: "A Jury of Her Peers" and Other Stories, restores the original ending: "He did not see her eyes." The version read here by Julia Sears follows the text printed in Every Week 4.10 (5 March 1917): 4-7, 21-22.

This was one of Susan Glaspell's very early stories, one she published in Drake University's newspaper, "The Delphic," in December 1903; it was reprinted four years later in "The Speaker," in September 1907, clearly because of shortness and its heart-warming character as a holiday piece. One of her slightly later stories, "For Love of the Hills" (appearing in her collection, "Lifted Masks") revisited the basic structure and feeling of "At the Turn of the Road." No matter how sophisticated and experimental Glaspell later became in her writing, she often returned to an emotional center around the idea of "home," so clearly visible in this early piece. Interestingly, Glaspell's very first published story (from 1896) was also on a Christmas theme, but we'll have to save that one for another time.

Susan Glaspell's fictionalized account of a real controversy in 1910 Davenport over censorship and free speech, over the question whether a particular book ought to be purchased by the local library, raises (and satirizes) issues that are still with us today. The real book behind the scandal was G. B. Foster's "The Finality of the Christian Religion" -- and Glaspell herself was very much engaged in the debate at the time. For a full account of this episode in Davenport history, see Marcia Noe's "Three Midwestern Playwrights" (2022), Chapter 5. The story was originally published in the "Pictorial Review" in July, 1916.

The versatile writer and journalist Floyd Dell (1887-1969) was a good friend of Susan Glaspell and George Cram Cook. He became acquainted with them in the Davenport, Iowa, area before moving to Chicago for a few years, where he wrote for the Friday Literary Review of the Chicago Evening Post, and afterwards heading out to the East coast -- a short time before they did too. All three were active with the Provincetown Players. Dell, who served as an editor for the "Masses" magazine and immersed himself in Greenwich Village life, recorded his observations in a series of pieces he ultimately collected in 1926 as "Love in Greenwich Village." The chapter here narrated, "Phantom Adventure," was originally published in "The Century Magazine" in December 1923, and was reprinted as one of the "Best Short Stories of 1924" (which included the tail end of 1923) edited by Edward J. O'Brien. It effectively explores the connections and conflicts between respectability and adventure, practicality and imagination.

Photographs: "Dancing," selected images from a portfolio by Eadweard Muybridge (1887).

In this story, Susan Glaspell asks her readers to ponder the true nature of success and failure, and what it is that really makes a life worth living and looking back on with satisfaction. It was originally published in the first number of "The Liberator" (March 1918), a magazine founded by Max and Crystal Eastman as a successor to "The Masses."