Steppin' Out

Story

New play highlights women who shaped California history

By Heather Zimmerman

For Tabard Theatre Company's seventh season, each of the three plays staged in 2007-08 will be a world premiere. The season opener, More Than Petticoats, may delve into the past, but the play is brand-new.

More Than Petticoats, which runs Sept. 7-15 at the Triton Hall Pavilion, 1900 Don Ave., Santa Clara, is Tabard's first original production. The play covers more than a century of California history, from 1840 to 1970, through the stories of seven women who were influential in shaping the Golden State. Some of the seven are familiar names, such as photographer Dorothea Lange and architect Julia Morgan, while other women, such as Mary Ellen Pleasant, the mother of California civil rights, aren't widely known.

Erin H. Turner's book More Than Petticoats: Remarkable California Women was the basis for the play. Inspiration struck Tabard's managing artistic director Cathy Spielberger Cassetta when, as she was waiting to meet a friend at a bookstore, Turner's book caught her eye. Cassetta acquired the adaptation rights, and she and director Jenny Hollingworth, plus five other collaborators, have been working on the play since this spring.

In addition to Lange, Morgan and Pleasant, other California history-makers featured in the play are naturalist and author Mary Austin, Chinese translator Tye Leung Schultze, Native American mediator Toby Winema Riddle and political force Jessie Benton Frémont.

Cassetta says these women highlight California's diverse population, and notes that they worked in a variety of fields. "We wanted a cross-section, a representation of art, culture and politics," she says.

Bringing these historical figures to life was a team effort. While Cassetta developed the play's concept and focused on the scenes for Morgan and Pleasant, and Hollingworth covered Austin, Cassetta also brought aboard Andrew Ceglio, Joanne Engelhardt, Leslie Hardy Tamel and Irene Trapp to contribute to the script. Engelhardt and Tamel, who play Frémont and Lange respectively, have researched and written their characters. This summer, playwright Doug Brook joined the collaboration, unifying all the scenes into one script, which tells the women's stories chronologically.

In addition to consulting Turner's book, the playwriting team conducted original research. They contacted experts and authors, such as Mark Wilson, who's writing a book about Morgan, and relatives, including Riddle's great-great granddaughter, Morgan's goddaughter and Schultze's family.

These sources provided information and helped the team keep the characters true to life, Cassetta notes. "We have sent pages of the script to these people who were experts or relatives," she says. "because we want to make sure that the content is accurate, but also the dialogue."

A particular challenge was finding a voice for each of the women, with a cast of characters that spans different cultures and more than a century's worth of language changes. When possible, the team used letters, diaries and interviews to learn how each woman might have spoken, and included direct quotes in the script, such as from a 1902 newspaper interview with Pleasant, or passages from Frémont's letters.

"What we want to communicate is the personal stories of these women within the context of history.

For those who want to learn more, Tabard is offering the Petticoats Panel on Sept. 8, 11 a.m. at the Triton Hall Pavilion. The panel will feature relatives of some of the women in the play, as well as Morgan author Wilson; Turner, author of the book More Than Petticoats; and Brook, the playwright for More Than Petticoats. The event includes audience Q&A.

Tickets are $20 (student/senior discounts available). Admission to the Petticoats Panel is free. For more information, call 408.679.2330 or visit www.tabardtheatre.org.