Christmas stockings and personal items donated by club members to Safe Harbors for their clients.
Toiletries collected for victims of domestic violence served by Safe Harbors of the Finger Lakes. Donation boxes placed at the Geneva Public Library and Geneva Lattimore Physical Therapy during the 16 Days of Activism.
The staged reading of Fossenvue lasts approximately two hours, including one intermission. Admission is free, with no reservations required. Donations will be accepted for the actors. Refreshments will be available.
For more information, email: Isabelle Doran Jensen [email protected].
Zonta Club of Geneva and Geneva Public Library Present Staged Reading of Fossenvue
Geneva, NY— How does the past collide with the present? Playwright Chris Woodworth wrestles with that question in her play Fossenvue, which imagines the summer camp of famed Geneva suffragists Elizabeth Smith Miller and her daughter Anne Fitzhugh Miller, through the eyes of a present-day mother and daughter. Fossenvue will be performed as a script-in-hand staged reading on Wednesday March 6, 2024 at 6:30 p.m. in the Reading Room of the Geneva Public Library. The staged reading is co-sponsored by the Zonta Club of Geneva and the Geneva Public Library. Admission is free.
For several decades Geneva suffragists Elizabeth Smith Miller (Eleanor Stearns) and Anne Fitzhugh Miller (Chris Woodworth), and many of their friends gathered across Seneca Lake at a summer camp they called Fossenvue. Swimming, singing, writing, and suffrage strategizing filled their days and nights at Caywood Point. In the present day, Kate (Joanne Saracino) and Lizzie (Christina Roc) arrive at Fossenvue in the winter. Kate desperately wants her daughter to love the site and its history as much as she does. Lizzie has different ideas. At its core, Fossenvue is a play about mothers and daughters. Rounding out the cast is Anthony Bray, who reads stage directions.
Inspired by research conducted at Historic Geneva and in the Library of Congress NAWSA digital collections, as well as site visits to “Queen’s Castle,” Fossenvue weaves together past and present. The play imagines the early days of Fossenvue and raises difficult questions about the legacies of race and suffrage activism today. How do we reckon with the echoes and reverberations of the predominantly white women’s suffrage movement in the present? How do we acknowledge the harms of the past without denying or whitewashing? How do we grapple with these thorny questions while navigating the loving and tumultuous personal landscapes of families?
Fossenvue has received staged readings at Women’s Rights National Historical Park (Seneca Falls, NY), Three Bears Historic Courthouse (Ovid, NY), Historic Geneva (NY), and the Ulysses Historical Society (Trumansburg, NY). Fossenvue was developed through an Individual Artist Grant, with funds from the Statewide Community Regrants program, a regrant program of New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature and administered by Auburn Public Theater. Chris Woodworth is Professor of Theatre at Hobart and William Colleges, where she currently chairs the Theatre Department. She is a member of the Dramatists Guild and Honor Roll. More information about her plays and other theatre work can be found at www.thisworldofyes.com. Woodworth was a recipient of a Zonta Scholarship in 1995.
