Down River – March 26, 2015
From Maple Avenue to the Great White Way:
Or Fun Home goes to Broadway.
Friday night is the night. Fun Home, the musical based on Alison Bechdel’s graphic memoir Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic, makes its Broadway debut at the Circle in the Square Theatre.
Friday is actually the start of previews, the official opening set for Sunday, April 19. And if the musical does anything close, artistically and financially, to its off-Broadway run from September of 2013 to January of 2014, it will only enhance the reputation of the show’s creators and that of Bechdel, the Beech Creek born-and-raised graphic novelist.
The Jeanine Tesori-Lisa Kron musical first opened at the Public Theater in lower Manhattan to superlative reviews and was extended four times into January of last year. It dramatizes Bechdel’s coming of age in Beech Creek in the 1970s and her complex relationship with her closeted father Bruce.
The musical received rave off-Broadway reviews. Awards bestowed included Best Musical from the New York Drama Critics Circle; it also was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Drama.
Now it comes to Broadway with most of the original cast returning: Tony Award-winner Michael Cerveris will again play Bechdel’s father and Judy Kuhn will again be cast as Bechdel’s mother Helen. Three actresses, Beth Malone, Sydney Lucas and Emily Skeggs will reprise their roles as Bechdel at various stages of her life.
Bechdel was recently interviewed on the Sundance Blog and asked about the opportunity presented by a Broadway showing:
“I want as many people to connect with it as possible. It’s amazing for this lesbian story and this lesbian character to be on the stage in this very mainstream setting and I think that’s a great thing for everyone to see – lesbians and young queer people especially, but everyone. So I just hope a lot of people get to see it.”
The Bald Eagle-Nittany High School – Oberlin College graduate was asked if she felt a responsibility as an artist to keep changing and adding to the perception of feminism in the world:
“I don’t feel like I’m interested in perceptions of feminism, per se. I want to write about my own life and my own reality as a woman. That’s what feminism is all about, for women to have that kind of agency in the world. I don’t care what people think about feminism as long as I can say what I want.”
This is heavy, thought-provoking material to have ultimately ebbed its way out of Beech Creek and evolved into something unique in American theater. We’ll all be the better for it if we take advantage of the opportunity to observe this artistically done slice of troubled American family life.
It is understood more than a few Clinton County residents will be taking the several hour trip east on Interstate 80 to take advantage of professional theater as good as it gets.
And the production will only add to the stature of Bechdel who just last year was among the winners of a MacArthur Genius Grant, no small achievement.
Alison and Victoria:
While Bechdel likely is the most notable living Beech Creek native, there is a notable former borough resident who, if she were alive today, would be justifiably proud of the Bechdel accomplishments.
That would be one Victoria Woodhull who may or may not have been born in Beech Creek, the daughter of Buck Claflin, the Claflin home on Main Street now long gone. (There is also a school of thought she was born in Sinnamahoning or maybe Homer, Ohio).
But Victoria Claflin Woodhull, by most accounts, did live in Beech Creek for a spell while growing up and she is notable for something she shares with Hillary Clinton: aspirations to be president of the United States.
Woodhull made history in 1872 as the first female candidate for president, the nominee of the Equal Rights Party.
A newspaper account at the time said Mrs. Woodhull was ecstatic with the nomination and her running mate Frederick Douglass. The account writer liked the ticket: “We had the oppressed sex represented by Woodhull; we must have the oppressed race represented by Douglass.”
The party platform, according to the report, demanded (are you listening Ted Cruz?) “a new National Constitution, and numerous other things in the revolutionary line.”
She didn’t win and accounts are sketchy on how she did (keep in mind women were a long way from the right to vote in 1872). Reports said votes received ranged anywhere from 2,000 to 16,000.
Down River brings Victoria Woodhull to your attention during a time an organization called Women on 20s is attempting to get a prominent deceased American female on the $20 bill.
History tells us that among women, only Martha Washington, on the silver certificate in 1886, has graced our paper currency. The Women on 20s group is mounting a drive to get that changed by 2020, the 100th anniversary of women’s suffrage.
A list of 15 notable American women has been compiled and voters can go online to support the nominee of their choice. A check of the list shows that Victoria Woodhull is not among them but one would think her credentials were sufficient to merit some consideration.
If you’re of the inclination, go online and support the woman of your choice for the $20 bill (sorry Andrew Jackson). Maybe someday Rosa Parks or Eleanor Roosevelt will be the face of the twenty. Maybe someday we’ll even have a female Clinton County Commissioner. Don’t ever say never.
