Photo credit: Arthur Cohen
This event is FREE and open to the public.
Seminary Ridge Museum and Education Center presents GETTYSBURG : ONE WOMAN’S WAR, on Monday, March 30, at 6:30 p.m. in the Valentine Hall Auditorium at 61 Seminary Ridge on the Gettysburg campus of United Lutheran Seminary (ULS).This unique dramatization views America’s Civil War through the eyes of young townswoman, wife, and mother Mary Bowman. Professional actress Michèle LaRue brings Mary vividly to life, spiriting audiences back to July 1, 1863—as the assault on Gettysburg, PA, begins. That murderous battle, fought 163 years ago, altered the course of the war and created our first National Cemetery. This one-woman play was praised as, “priceless. . . . masterfully, professionally, affectively and effectively presented … Truly a treasure,” * when performed for Historic Gettysburg Adams County, in Gettysburg.
LaRue adapted this presentation from novelist Elsie Singmaster’s classic Gettysburg: Stories of the Red Harvest and the Aftermath—published in 1913, the semi-centennial of the War Between the States. A century-plus later, Singmaster’s fictional wife and mother still grabs our imagination and our hearts. With Mary Bowman, we travel the emotional and physical terrain of 50 years: from the cannons’ first roar to the grief and devastation that follow; from the promise of Lincoln’s visit and commemoration, to the healing only time can bring. LaRue’s performance brings the work of Elsie Singmaster back to Seminary Ridge, where the writer resided during her father’s tenure as an early 20th-century campus president at the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Gettysburg (now ULS), a setting that directly inspired her Newberry Award-winning novel Swords of Steel (1933).
LaRue tours nationally with a repertoire of productions that revitalize writing from America’s Gilded Age. A Chicago native, transplanted to New Jersey, she has presented her offerings at nearly 600 venues—most prominently Washington’s Smithsonian Institution and Chicago’s Newberry Library.
“Back in 2013, to honor the Civil War Sesquicentennial, I searched for stories featuring women,” LaRue explains. “I’d about given up when a knowledgeable friend ** recommended Gettysburg: Stories of the Red Harvest and the Aftermath. Decades before, I had read a marvelous Singmaster novel called A High Wind Rising. This proved even better; it’s a stunning work.”
VALENTINE HALL AUDITORUM – 61 SEMINARY RIDGE, GETTYSBURG, PA, 17325
Elsie Singmaster (1878 – 1958) received little public schooling, yet graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Radcliffe. Of Pennsylvania German heritage and raised in small towns in the state, she lived most her adult life in Gettysburg. Her intimate knowledge of the town’s geography amplifies the vividness and clarity of her Gettysburg stories. Her best-known novels include I Speak for Thaddeus Stevens, A High Wind Rising, and Swords of Steel, a Newbery Honor Book.
Michèle LaRue, a graduate in Acting from the University of Kansas, is a longtime member of Actors’ Equity Association and SAG-AFTRA, the editor of multiple notable theatre books and periodicals, and a history enthusiast. http://michelelarue.com
GETTYSBURG : ONE WOMAN’S WAR
“July the First”: War comes to Gettysburg—where are the armies?
“The Battleground”: Lincoln comes to Gettysburg—where will it end?
“Mary Bowman”: Sightseers come to Gettysburg—where has it led?
Three stories from Elsie Singmaster’s classic Gettysburg: Stories of the Red Harvest and the Aftermath
Singmaster’s 1913 short story collection vividly explores the physical and emotional terrain of a Civil War icon. With townswoman Mary Bowman, live the battle and its legacy—from the cannons’ first roar to its echoes a half century on.
* “What you have to offer is priceless. There is almost nothing in the whole big 150th celebration that focuses on women. . . . So masterfully, professionally, affectively and effectively presented… Truly a treasure.”
--Paula Olinger, Associate Professor, Gettysburg College; Member, Historic Gettysburg Adams County
** Susan Koppelman, renowned editor of stories by nineteenth-century American women