Good morning, good morning, good morning, and welcome, welcome, welcome.
It is time now for our community connection right here on K one,
the one you trust. And we have many of the ladies from the League
of Women Voters here with us here in Bartlesville. And we just had a
you know, the preferential election last night. But we're not here so much
to talk about an election. We're talking about women and the suffrage movement here
and a brilliant play that's going to be taking place here and not too long
called American Woman. And I know you're right now you're hearing the song,
but you know it's not going to be like Fran Starlings is with us.
Hey friend, how you doing today? Just fine? Now you're the program
share tell us a little bit about what's going on here. Well, this
play is based on one that was written for the centennial of suffrage, which
was back would have been in twenty twenty. That's right here. We were
all set to do a two act play with dozens of people in costume,
and everything shut down. March is Women's History month, and so we were
going to do it in March, but that's when everything shut down. We
were very discouraged because this play had been written by Jan Driling, our District
Judge, and Joan Dreisker, and they had worked really hard, done a
lot of research. Well, League of Women voters decided now that things have
opened up again, it was time to give it another try, but not
the big two act splendiferous thing Shelby and Sydney Bremmer worked on. It's a
small splendid sence. Yes, it's well still going to be splendiferous, but
it's going to be a one act reader's theater with three actors they'll to tell
you about. And it's going to be a week from tomorrow, March fourteen,
Oh good, at Theater Bartlesville downtown, and it's going to be free
with the reception afterwards. So wow, we really excited about what they're going
to do. Now. This is great because at Theater Bartlesville, it's very
intimate, it's very close up, you know, and on top of that,
it's just really kind of a good, cool place to do things.
So tell us a little bit about how we got together on directing, code
directing and maybe kind of rewriting this a little bit, ladies. Well,
I was involved in the very first production that they thought they were going to
do. I think, and my sister and I started, you know,
just kind of talking about what can we do? This is great material.
Something has to happen to her. And Connie Lavoy, who was the president
of the League of Women Voters, had the same idea and she asked us
to kind of develop this as a as a presentation to fulfill their educational mission
of the legal Women Voters. Shelby did the adaptation well at that and then
we are sort of kind of co directors. I guess where I handle a
lot of the producing background stuff, and Shelby is very much the creative engine
of the staging of this. And we have three wonderful actors including Shelby.
She's wearing three hats in this production and also too many hats. Shelley Holdman
is also going to be in the piece, and my husband, Eric Jacob,
and then we also have supernumeraries. We have a group of actresses from
Martlesville who are portraying various activists at different times in the suffrage movement history.
So it's a it's an exciting piece. Now, this was a little bit
of a challenge, but you pulled it off. And there was no doubt.
We think you've been around you. It was a challenge because it was
a huge epic piece with so much research and a fascinating tale. That's why
I kind of subtitled it a brief history and exciting true story of the woman
suffragist, because you were saying before we came in here, a lot of
people don't have any kind of memory of a time when women had to fight
to get the vote. You know, we heard it from my grandparents.
Yes, yes, and it's not about politics, but the fact that you
know, Nikki Haley is running and you know, the thought that we couldn't
vote is just very strange. So it took a long long time. So
I got caught up in the story, which is inherently dramatic. We've tried
to dramatize this because we didn't want to hit people with too much information because
it's a lot. But I think it'll be a brief, entertaining history,
a lot of history people don't know and should know. You know something,
There's nothing wrong with putting a little bit of entertainment into the information and making
it stick a little bit, while still being true to the intellectual content of
her exactly so that that was a nice little love formula. There you go,
now, Frand when it comes to this period of time in our history,
I just remember my grandfather saying one of them. Anyway, he said,
she knows more about what's going on than I do, so I'm glad
she got the opportunity. Nice And why is that, he says, well,
you know, I work all the time, and she gets a chance
to read the paper. Long before, back then they just had newspaper and
radio. And he said, she's well equipped. And I thought, that's
pretty dark nights. I never really saw anybody that was sore over that,
but I guess it was one of those things where it had been going on
so long nobody wanted to break the cycle. I guess. I guess.
There were a lot of phony arguments made about how women were too emotional,
or or well their brains were smaller. There were a lot of interesting excuses
made. Yes, there was two words that would just make most any woman
in my family just jump when they heard it. If a man ever said,
use the terminal high strung. Oh oh brother, no, that's good.
He smoke coming out people's ears. Only when we're denied the vote it
sounds like it's more of a thoughtful process and with a little bit of emotional
charge attached to it. They got it done. Historically, there was a
lot of process. It was a lot of hard long time, a long
time. The first Women's Convention was eighteen forty eight. It was something like
sixty two years for the women to get about. I will say this more
than that, yeah, because you know, yeah, yeah, that's right,
that's right. At some point one of my characters says, it's been
sixty two years. It was like, well, keep going over until yeah,
nineteen twenty nineteen. It lasted right through World War One, and it
was Woodrow Wilson's last important act in our mind at least, was to you
know, put that Nineteenth Amendment back up there as something that the Congress had
to vote on, and they did. They passed it, and then we
had to go through the long ratification process state by state, and it was
a women's movement had become so national, nationalized, hundreds of thousands of women
involved, and they made it happen. Now with the ratification that took what
two thirds of the states, yes, yes, thirty something in the States
had at the time forty eight in Hawaiian in Alaska, we're just hanging out
there being tourist attractions, you know. Even we even have a forty eight
star flag. Yes, we did, you do? Oh my goodness,
it's going to be part of the dressing. I'm just going to ask we
get to see it on stage. It's like, we will, we will.
This is going to be more than that flag. Now once again,
this is going to be on the fourteenth, fourteenth of March. Doors open
at six thirty, and it is what's the festival city. I mean,
there are no assigned seats, so if you want a certain kind of seat
comment sixth general mission. All the seats are good, like you say it
will there be standing room only? Well maybe I think the activists may be
stayed, yeah, oh yeah, have to. There's also going to be
a lobby display and there'll be refreshments after the It lasts about forty five to
fifty five minutes, depending on how long it takes for everybody to get seated
and everything, and then we'll have refreshments in the lobby afterwards, and we
hope people will show starts at seven. All right, do you have a
social media pages or a website? Where folks can go. He has a
Facebook page. I believe the Bartlesfield Women's Network, which is a co sponsor
of this, is also putting this up on their webs on their Facebook page,
and of course all of us personally are throwing it up on our own
Facebook pages, letting it get all viral it. Yes, yes, now,
this is great. I'm glad that finally this is going to be able
to take place because you've waited a long time, I mean since yes,
twenty Yeah. You know, voter apathy is a terrible problem in this country,
well judged by the light turnout yesterday, yes, and the League is
really dedicated to changing that, to making people understand how precious our right to
vote is. That's good. That's good, that's all the way around.
That includes anybody who's going to vote, no matter what you look like,
that's right. It's a non partisan the organization, and they are here just
to educate people about to how to register, how to vote, to go
through the process of it, and to get involved in their communities and their
politics. You're not allowed to complain if you don't vote. Oh yeah,
Frank Zappam you underscored that on some rather colorful language, but yeah, the
sentiment was exactly that if you don't vote, you know, shut your trap.
Yeah you had your chance at the voting booth. That is very important.
I've lived in communities where if they had fourteen to eighteen percent voter turnout,
it was considered a success. That was I just rolled my eyes at
that. I'm thinking, Wow, you have every opportunity to either a firm
or you know, vote for change in what's going on right where you live,
and you stayed home and watch TV. You know when I have it?
No, I just said, there you have it. And I do
want to say this isn't There is a man in this play, and men
also took part in the struggle for female voting. So for any gentleman out
there listening, it's not just a woman thing. Come see it. You'll
see that men were very much a part of this. We have a man
portraying an eleven year old boy who's against women voting, and he's very funny.
He writes to a newspaper in Oklahoma about why women should not have the
vote. But then you have men who you know, took part in the
struggle, And I just want to say it's not all female. Okay,
come on down. So we're going to get a good dose of history and
a modest amount of entertainment. Yes, yes, I will make a little
more than that. There were suffrage songs, live the ballot to the womb
that yeah, whole song books full of wow movement songs. She's the expert,
man, incredible, Save them more, you know. I want to
thank you ladies here from the League of Women Voters, Frand, Sydney and
Shelby for all being a part of this. And we'll see you next week
right there on the on the big stage. Thank you for having already We've
got more coming