The Mother of Us All

by Gertrude Stein
Directed by Jennifer Miller

Assistant to the Director: Raquel Ponce

Lighting Designer: Sarah Stolnack
Sets: Sawyer Mitchell
Costumes: Walter Dunderville
Music: Jessica Lurie
Susan B. Anthony Banner: Sam Wilson
Cast
Virgil Thompson............................................TRACIE MORRIS
Daniel Webster......................................................TESS KIND
Joe the Loiterer............................................SARAH B. APPEL
Chris the Citizen................................................JACK BUTLER
G.S.............................................................JENNIFER MILLER
Indiana Elliot..............................................CLAIRE LEDOYEN
Susan B. Anthony...........................................JORDAN PERZ
Angel Moore.............................................LISABETH DURING
John Adams....................................................RYAN MURPHY
Taddeus S.......................MIKAELA KALMAR / JACK BUTLER
Donald Gallup..............................................MICAH MERCER
Constance Fletcher................................LAUREN WOODARD
Andrew Jackson...........................................RAQUEL PONCE
Negro Man & Negro Women......................RYAN MURPHY &
NINA NAKAMURA
Lillian Russell.............................................BRIANNE MCKAIN
Jenny Reefer..............................................NINA NAKAMURA
Anne..........................................................MIKAELA KALMAR
Ulysses S. Grant................................................JACK BUTLER
VIPs..........RAQUEL PONCE, TESS KIND, MIKAELA KALMAR
Chorus of Big Men......................................RAQUEL PONCE,
NINA NAKAMURA, MICAH MERCER, TESS KIND
All other characters are represented by unadorned hand
puppetry and will be credited in situ.

A Word of Welcome
Gertrude Steins The Mother of Us All reminds us that the theater
is a time machineand a space machine, too. If youre not sure
what we mean by this, we invite you to let go of trying to make
sense. Right here in the theater, right now, as you read this. Let
go of linear time. Let go of characters names. Let go of sentences that start and end in the same place. To let go is not to surrender meaningafter all, Steins play is rich with history, political
arguments, jokes, innuendos, and relationships. Instead, think of
letting go as a method for watching, a different way to experience
language and meaning in this semi-abstract performance. This
wild pageant.
Stein, an extraordinarily innovative writer and central participant
in the Modernist movement, wrote The Mother of Us All as a
libretto for an opera by Virgil Thomson. It was first performed in
1947, nearly a year after Steins death. Luckily, Stein wrote herself
and Thomson into the play as characters, so she appeared in the
first production, just as she appears in Pratts rendering tonight.
Which brings us back to The Mother of Us All as a time (and
space) machine. In the play, Stein draws characters from her life,
from her imagination, and from various points in history. Central,
of course, is Susan B. Anthony, that lifelong fighter in the Womens Suffrage movement. Like many suffragists, Anthony started
public life in the abolitionist movement. As The Mother touches
on brieflyand as our dramaturges explore in depthscarce
resources and deep-seated racism drove the movements for
Black and (implicitly white) Womens suffrage apart. We return to
this play, then, as a complex legacy, with deep hopes of opening
intersectional conversations about how these strugglesand representational strategiesare alive with us today.
Director Jennifer Miller meets Stein on her (seemingly) austere
terrain, bringing her own artistic and political lineage to the stage.
Youll recognize a dash of the big, campy flamboyance from Millers work as the founding director of Circus Amok, where comedia
del arte and agit prop mingle with moves from downtown theater
and avant-garde dance.
Are you still with us? We admit that Gertrudes playful, wry,
careening language may have altered our ability to write in a
straight linebut straight lines are over rated. Were just getting
warmed up.

PERFORMER BIOS
Nina Nakamura
Nina is a senior at Pratt. She was born in Japan, and she
moved to the United States in 8th grade. Spending her
high school life in Michigan, she went to Pratt Institute in
New York to study illustration. Her hobby is to sneakily
photograph her surrounding people. She had never experienced live performance since she did once at an elementary school. Her first intentions to take the play course was
to learn something about costume and setting designs, in
which she was really interested, but during the semester she
learned many ways of expressing language through literature, sound, gesture, etc.
Tess Kind
Hailing from Philadelphia, Tess is a senior sculpture major
here at Pratt. In preschool, Tess was cast as the narrator
of the play The Three Billy Goats Gruff, and she feels that
performance helped catapult her towards this role as orator
Daniel Webster. Although it has been difficult to embody
Daniels arrogance and obtuse views, Tess has had a lot of
fun working on this play. It has been an honor to work with
such an amazing cast and crew.
Jordan Perz
Jordan Perz has been working in theatre on and offstage
since middle school and is continuing that through the performance program here at Pratt. This is her first performance
on Memorial Halls stage and hopefully not her last, shes
only finishing her freshmen year so youll definitely see her
again. Jordan majors in film, so if anyone wants to buy her
foundation year supplies contact @jordvnpcrcz.
Sarah Appel
Sarah B. Appel is a graduating poetry undergrad who is in
the process of investigating ways of writing against capital-

ism. To that end, she is one of the founding members and

a cobbler at BookWook Press Collective, and works with
children whenever and however she can. Sarah would also
love to be a dog walker and give urban pets as much time
outside as possible. Her previous roles include a short stint
in the chorus of a 2003 rendition of Music Man and played
Nancy in Bye Bye Birdie the following year. She is very excited to explore with you the varying degrees of privilege in
this play, dressed as a man, a man named Jo, Jo the Loiterer. And if you are looking for a dog walker, please speak to
her after the show.
M. Ryan Murphy
M. Ryan Murphy is a sophomore writing major studying
poetry and performance art. They are originally from Mississippi but thankfully now live in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn. They like
ballet, the movie Precious, and discussing animal rights. This
is their first play at Pratt.
Raquel Ponce
Raquel is junior writing major focusing on fiction. She has
performed in two previous plays at Pratt (Camille and
Dasvedanya Mama). She loves wearing suits and top hats,
so this particular play is a perfect fit. This is her first year as
assistant to the director.
Claire LeDoyen
Claire LeDoyen is graduating from the Creative Writing
program this year, and has written her senior thesis in poetry, titled Plutocracy Bureaucracy in collaboration with
Sarah Appel (Jo the Loiterer)I never write my bios in first
person, but this year is different Ive been in the Spring
production under Jennifer Millers direction every year since
I was a freshman and cannot express the gratitude I have
for the opportunities and knowledge that she, Tracie Morris,
and the budding Performance Studies program have given
me the past few years. I will miss it, and will keep everything

close to my heart. To the cast and crew of The Mother of Us

All it was a humbling, fun, and important experience working with all of you. Thank you for all of your dedication and
the community we built together. Yall are seriously impressive and should be really proud of this work.
Micah Mercer
Micah is a senior writing major. Throughout her life she has
performed in a variety of things including dance competitions, plays, and bathroom concerts where the mic is a
hairbrush and the audience is only one person.
Lauren Woodard
Lauren Woodard is a junior writing major.
Jack Butler
Sophomore Film Major, Stand-up Comic, Improv, WPIR Radio Host.

THE MOTHER OF ALL

Program Notes
Being dramaturgical
writings & research by
LEEANN REED
DAVID MILLER
KESIA A. CAMERON
IAN KELLEY
MORGAN REICHERT
ROBERTINO DEL ROSARIO
ZAI CHAKRANE
conducted in
AMANDA DAVIDSONs
Critical Thinking Course for
Writing Majors at
Pratt Institute
Spring 2016
& further
accompanied by a

POP-UP LIBRARY
IN THE
MEMORIAL HALL LOBBY

LEEANN REED

The fight for womens suffrage in the United States
lasted from the mid-1800s to the 1920s. The play The Mother of Us All by Gertrude Stein highlights the struggles and
controversies that surrounded the womens suffrage movement in the United States. One of the issues the play fails
to expand on is the racism that was prevalent on part of the
white feminists at the time. In the play, Susan B. Anthony
has a brief conversation with a black man:

Susan B: Negro man would you vote if you only can

and not she.

Negro Man: You bet.

Susan B: I fought for you that you could vote would

you vote if they not let me

(Act 2, Scene 3).
This particular interaction briefly shows the tension between
blacks and white feminists during the fight for suffrage.
Many women suffragists were supportive of black rights, but
there was a sense of superiority amongst the white women. A good example of this tension existed between black
journalist and activist Ida B. Wells and Frances E. Willard, a
white suffragist and voice for the Womans Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) in the United States.

The WCTU was one of many movements that used
religious morals as a basis of social reform. These groups
came from a revival of religion in the 1820s. They fought not
only for temperance and morality, but fought for the abolishment of slavery. Many women in organizations like the
WCTU had a connection to abolition ("Prohibition"). Over
time the WCTU gained a strong voice but the organizations
leaders were criticized for using it selectively.

At a London temperance meeting in 1893, Wells
spoke about the treatments of blacks in the South and the
injustices that occurred. She shed light on the nature of
lynchings and showed that the wide spread stereotypes
about blacks were completely inaccurate, such as the gen-

eralization that all black men were rapists (Totten). There,

she met Frances E. Willard, who was an important Christian
temperance leader in the US. In 1890, Willard did an interview with the New York temperance publication The Voice
where she talked ill of blacks, saying that Better whiskey
and more of it' has been the rallying cry of great dark-faced
mobs. She argues that blacks immorality and illiteracy
should ban them from voting, especially since so many
educated white Christian women couldnt and should vote
(Erbach). During Wells 1983 lectures in Britain, a question
was posed about Willards contribution the anti-lynching
movement. Wells stated, My answer to these queries was
that neither of those great exponents of Christianity in our
country had ever spoken out in condemnation of lynching
(Wells-Barnett 131-32). Wells criticized Willard for her lack of
action when it came to addressing black problems, and for
supporting unfair stereotypes that vilified blacks.

The milieu of The Mother Of Us All by Gertrude Stein
was a time where not only womens rights an issue but also
racism, as it was used as a weapon against blacks rather
than righting stereotypes. In the play, Susan B. ponders
which side she should choose: I must choose colored or
white white or colored I must choose (Act 2, Scene 2). In
the end she comes to the conclusion that she should fight
for women because we may pretend to go in good faith
but will there be no faith in us (Act 2 Scene 3). Susan B.
argues that the choice women made to support themselves
was because they needed to be seen as people who could
stand for themselves. But historically, the ways in which that
happened were detrimental to black peoples image.

DAVID MILLER

Gertrude Stein sure is something, not only because of
her innovative and experimental writing, but as an historical
figure. As the play youre about to witness shows, and as
you could likely guess based on her own gender, Stein was a
supporter of womens rights. But as the play also shows, she
was acutely aware of the problems surrounding the suffrage
movement and its leaders. Based on this information alone,
one could assume that Gertrude Stein was a progressive
person and supporter of social movements that demanded
equality for people of all shapes and sizes. And this may be
true. But then why, as a Jew, a lesbian, and a woman (walk
into a bar) did she surround herself with men like Ernest
Hemingway (a notorious misogynist and mistreater of his
many wives), T. S. Eliot (a well-known anti-Semite), and Ezra
Pound (whose work for the Italian government during WWII
doing radio broadcasts in support of Hitler and in criticism of Franklin D. Roosevelt and of Jews led to his being
charged with treason)?

That these are the companions Stein chose to keep
may come as a surprise, but feels less and less surprising
the more you begin to understand her personal life. Like
her friends, she engaged in affairs despite her long-term
commitment to her partner, and was apathetic at best when
it came to her feelings about the Jews, as the lack of any
reference to her own Jewishness or Jewishness in general in
the play and her friendships with and admirations for powerful members of the collaborationist Vichy government and
the Nazi government itself reflects. Like many great artists,
and like her Modernist contemporaries, Gertrude Stein was
a flawed person, but her influence as a writer knows no
bounds.

KESIA A. CAMERON XY Formation

They have no idea of how every single inch of ground that
she stands upon today has been gained by the hard work of
some little handful of women of the past.
Susan B. Anthony
Solid Ground

On the night before the framing of the Declaration of
Independence in 1776, Abigail Adams foresaw the sexism
and oppression women would be stricken by for centuries to
come, warning her husband, if particular care and attention
is not paid to the Ladies, we are determined to foment a Rebellion (Barry 1). Two opinionated women, Elizabeth Caddy
Stanton and Lucretia Mott, connected after being silenced
behind the barrier of gender at the World Antislavery Convention in 1840. In 1846, Margaret Brent raised the question
to the Maryland legislature asking for her vote. However, it
wasnt until 1848, when Stanton and Mott reunited at a tea
party, that they organized the Seneca Falls convention for
womens rights and the structured suffrage movement took
off (Harris). Susan B. Anthony joined Stanton in 1851, and
together they dedicated their lives to fight diligently in the
suffragist, abolitionist, and temperance movements.
Front Line
On the night of November 5th, 1879, Susan B. Anthony
organized a group of women to cast their votes. When met
with resistance at the polls, she threatened the officers with
the potential to sue, pronouncing that there was nothing in
the 14th Amendment declaring women not to be citizens,
and fourteen women successfully cast ballots.

The arrest of Anthony was a demonstration that put
her in the news. The governing officer attempted to escort
her to court with a delicacy and politeness catered respectfully to the fragility of womento which Anthony replied,
Is this your usual method of serving a warrant [then she]

stood before him and held out her wrists to be handcuffed

(Barry 299).
Religion Delegates a Great Ghosts Legacy

It is interesting that Stanton admitted, I am the
better writer, shes the better critic (Burns 6). How, then,
did Susan B. Anthony become the face of the revolution?
Anthony never married and compared the act to slavery,
and she also never bore any children, all of which made her
the living embodiment of an ideal feminist and a perfect
role model to become The Mother of Us All. Stanton had
started the fight after enduring marriage and bearing seven
children. In a letter to her mother, Stantons daughter recognized neither without the other would have achieved
the work you have accomplished (DuBois 213). This was
apparent throughout their careers and lives. It was only after
their deaths that the memory of their friendship and shared
success would split.

In later years, despite Anthonys warning, Stanton
published The Womans Bible, which contained radical views
and argued that the bible viewed women as equal. Stanton
garnered criticism from women and men alike; ultimately,
this radical point of view may have been too forward for the
time and would cast a shadow on Stantons life work.
Sowed until their fingers bled, and died before that lawful
thread

Overall both Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Caddy
Stanton were equipped with incredible strength and made
immense progress for women, but sadly would not cast
a legal vote in their lifetime. Alice Paul would assume the
responsibility, creating the Congressional Union and National Womans party, helping Woodrow Wilson pass the 19th
Amendment in 1920.

IAN KELLEY The Devil in Daniel Webster

Famed Senator and Secretary of State Daniel Webster was known as a powerful orator among his colleagues.
But like most conservative men of the seventeenth century, he was also an outspoken opponent of the universal
suffrage movement, even going as far as calling it the
great rumpus of agitation (Anthony). You may be asking
yourselves: what could drive so many people to oppose
universal suffrage in a nation that was supposedly built on
equality through freedom? This position might seem archaic
by todays standards, but for Webster, the reasoning boiled
down to land ownership.

Webster believed power naturally and necessarily follows property and that a government that allowed
non-property owners to vote is founded in injustice and
can only be maintained by military force (Webster). Only
people who owned property should have the right to be
represented in government, he reasoned, seeing as that
theyre the only ones who have a physical stake in the laws
that the govern their lands. Of course, the only people who
were allowed to own land at the time were white men. Webster thought if we allowed everyone to vote, regardless of
race or gender, then the state of the Union would be thrown
into flux as voters wouldnt care about the outcomes of elections because they did not have any land at risk.

Gertrude Stein understood the patriarchal, authoritarian Daniel Webster and toyed with him in her play The
Mother of Us All by using his own identity against him. Stein
incorporated excerpts of Websters letters and speeches
into the play in order to deflate his empty political rhetoric,
giving Webster the appearance of an inept buffoon, ripe for
laughter and scrutiny. Websters dialogue in this form has
ceased to function, and so quickly becomes the meaningless repeated phrases of patriotic speech (Barlow). We can
see an example of this during the debate between Webster and Anthony: Coming and coming alone, no man is
alone when he comes, when he comes when he is coming
he is not alone and now ladies and gentlemen I have done,
remember that remember me remember each one. Stein
is playing with the idea of dense political chatter as nothing
more than that; chatter of a men pontificating about preserving a Union that they, in reality, are so removed from.

MORGAN REICHERT

The nineteenth century was a pivotal time for the
Womens Rights movement. There was a vast effort on the
part of women for the right to vote, even though in the
end they failed to win the vote until some 50 years later.
Throughout the later 1800s, many Womens Rights activists, such as Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton,
struggled to find footing for the Womens Suffrage movement side by side with the already turning wheels of Black
(male) Suffrage, eventually abandoning the partnership all
together and campaigning for Womens Suffrage alone.
Because of this splitwhich is often referred to as the saddest divorce in American history (Dudden 3)white women and black men ended up fighting over limited resources.
Figures such as Anthony and Stanton, who had in the past
campaigned with and for Black (male) Suffrage, resorted to
messages of racism in an effort to further their own cause.
Gertrude Steins opera The Mother of Us All follows the first
wave of the Womens Rights movement through the actions
and life of Susan B. Anthony, but Stein fails to bring up the
issue of racism in the movement. There is only a small section of the play that refers to the conflicts between Womens
Suffrage and Black (male) Suffrage. In Act 2, Scene 3 there
is an exchange between Anthony and a black couplewho
are not given namesin which only the man speaks and the
woman remains silent:

Susan B: Negro man would you vote if you only

can and not she.

Negro Man: You bet.

Susan B: I fought for you that you could vote would

you vote if they not let me.
This exchange at first glance may seem like a logical explanation for why Anthony and her followers are not also fighting for Black (male) Suffrage. But looking further than face
value, I realized that this is actually a huge clue in the play to
the racism that came with the first wave of Womens Rights,
because although The Mother of Us All is mostly a historical
opera, it was still written by Gertrude Stein. Stein made the

decisions to not even give the black couple names not to let
the black woman speak, bringing forth her own prejudices
to the stage.

In the beginning, both Womens Suffrage and Black
(male) Suffrage movements worked together toward a
common goal: Suffrage for all. In the 1830s, William Lloyd
Garrison, a white man with a strong belief that all men were
created equal and the leader of the American Anti-Slavery
Society, brought Sarah and Angelina Grimke from South
Carolina forward to testify against slavery. While the two
white women were speaking on behalf of abolition, they
drew obvious parallels between the bondage of slaves
and the subordination of women (Dudden 4). After realizing this, the Grimke sisters started writing and speaking on
behalf of Womens Rights; this is where the movement was
born.

But not everything was the same. Eleanor Flexner,
in her book Century of Struggle, points out many of the
differences between Womens and Black Rights. Bringing
to light the unequal and unethical treatment of both white
women against white men, and between white women and
black slaves of both genders, Flexner writes: The women
kidnapped from city streets, or sold out of crowded prisons
and brought to this country to serve as indentured servants,
had something to look forward to, if they survived: at the
end of seven years they would be freeNo such vision sustained the men and women of dark skins (18). Anthony, as
one of the leading advocates, decided that women should
embrace the old saying go big or go home, and began demanding votes for women. However, the men who Anthony
had been fighting with for Black Rights did not back her up;
they believed that womens suffrage was ahead of its time
and that it was the black mans time to stand front and center. This ultimately pushed Anthony and Stanton to promote
messages of racism in order to gain funding from powerful
but racist white men for their cause. These reasons for racism in the Womens Rights movement are not excuses, they
are simply an explanation.

ROBERTINO DEL ROSARIO

In its translation from the page to the stage, a production of theater in any format, also transmute with it
qualities such as ambition. I have found that the theatre, the
performance on stage, has the responsibility of taking the
scriptan inanimate piece of textand bringing its ambitions to life. The script may be written with emotion and
freedom, or with great attention to detail. However in both
cases, the script is still just as lifeless as the paper that it is
written upon. The director, actors, and even the musicians
bring life into the picture. This aspect of theater is why Gertrude Stein and Virgil Thomson created The Mother of Us
All.

The Mother of Us All stands out as a theater piece for
a myriad of reasons; its societal ideas, the casting choices,
and the dreamlike strange setting of a pageant. This setting, traditional pageants, were orchestrated to teach young
men and young women societal norms, mannerisms, and
marriage etiquette. Stein provokingly used this setting, and
therefore a viewer could see that she had a similar ambition.
The concerns for this artistic, theatrical and poetic undertaking were that Stein was too poetic and unconventional, and
that Thomson, the composer, was too straight laced, traditional, and rigid. Though both were evidently good at their
respective crafts, they were known to exist largely in different worlds, different scenes. The resulting opera, however,
was dreamlike, politically and socially driven, and strove to
mark out its individual space in history. The narrative written by Stein is driven; she juxtaposes herself and Susan B.
Anthony with several allegorical figures so that the work
defies historical time, challenging directors and audiences to
readjust their historical picture to accommodate this strange
mixture of characters.

Steins narrative was set to life by Thomson's accompaniment, a mixture of gospel hymns, classical, and folk
music. These sounds were particular to a pageant and other

festivities, and in The Mother Of Us All they lend themselves

to the narrative in such a way that the pageant aspect of it
is brought fully into reality. From here on, after the music,
all other manner of production is up to the director and the
actors. I was able to sit in on a rehearsal for our schools own
rendition of The Mother Of Us All. In our production of Stein
and Thomsons work the lyric and music are omitted, thus
the entirety of the responsibility in the emotions and motions of the actors. The actors must lavish their every action
with intention, and the intentions and the motives of every
motion are repeatedly discussed and rehashed by the director. By providing living energy, by being the characters, by
creating the mood, these people here tonight constitute the
theater.

ZAI CHAKRANE
The Mother Of Us All, Is She Really The Mother of Us ALL?

In Gertrude Steins The Mother Of Us All, Susan B.
Anthony stands as a strong and important figure. Her fight
for womens right to vote is crucial. In Act 2 Scenes 2 and
3 there is discussion of not only womens rights but also
black rights. In these sections, the play highlights the issue
of black voter rights and the divide between women and
black men in this battle of who will get the right to vote.
The questions and the controversies circling around whether
black men were to be granted the right to vote is one that
as well shows through in this play.

Black rights and black theatre. What is the relation?
Much more then most would expect. Much of black theatre
began with black face and the degradation of black culture
in America. Originally, the only roles black artists got in the
theatre were not even played by them. White characters
would over exaggerate African American features and perform in black face and completely and absolutely shame the
black community. The start of the black community breaking
these stereotypes and showcasing what black folks actually
wanted to see and perform in started with the move from
realism to rituals. Slowly the black theatre community broke
out of Western cultural stereotypes and moved up to the
storytelling of their history and actual culture from their eyes
and not the eyes of others.

This started by basing works around the motherland,
Africa. Many black artists based productions around telling the stories of African culture instead of the history of
just the Western world. It was progressAfrican American
people bringing back their roots and finding who they truly
were before they were made to believe they were less then
human. After this progression had occurred, black theatre
moved towards the telling of their rituals instead of just the
stories of realism. Black theatre was able retell their history
from the Western world and dignify their culture. They re-

claimed what was once held against them in the war of stereotype and racism. Through these progressions in theatre,
the black community grew as well in many aspects. All while
the theatre world is progressing, black citizens are earning
their rights and their liberation back. It was no longer just
a dream they sang to us on stage; the black community
worked hard and made progress in all fields of their community.

Program Notes & Pop-Up Library

A DRAMATURGICAL undertaking
consisting of RESEARCH &
ORIGINAL WRITINGS pertaining to
sundry HISTORICAL CONTEXTS &
CULTURAL CONSIDERATIONS
surrounding tonights performance
as gathered and penned by
these good SCRIBES & SCHOLARS

LEEANN REED
DAVID MILLER
KESIA A. CAMERON
IAN KELLEY
MORGAN REICHERT
ROBERTINO DEL ROSARIO
ZAI CHAKRANE
who, having both
FULLFILLED & TRANSCENDED
their stations as WRITING MAJORS
in AMANDA DAVIDSONs Spring 2016 class
at the Pratt Institute,
hereby invite you to READ with CURIOSITY
through the pages of this PLAYBILL
and also to BROWSE FREELY
through the SOURCE MATERIALS and
scrupulously ANNOTATED BIBLIGIOGRAPHIES
compiled in the POP-UP LIBRARY,
located in the LOBBY
of this selfsame
MEMORIAL HALL