NYC play on women's labor history recreates Union Square activities

"Women's Voices From Union Square," an original musical play about women's labor history in the United States, will be performed in New York City, May 1-12, in honor of Labor History Month. The play and lyrics were written by Dorothy Fennell, a Cornell labor historian who is director of special projects for unions at the School of Industrial and Labor Relations extension division in New York City. The play is produced and presented by the ILR extension division's New York City office, with grants from the New York Council for the Humanities and the Puffin Foundation and support from the Amalgamated Bank and several trade unions.

Fennell and Katie Briggs, a staff member with the ILR New York City office, describe the play and its roots in the following article.

By Dorothy Fennell and Katie Briggs

The cast and director of Women's Voices from Union Square are, from left: Twinkle Burke, Deanne Lorette, Katie O'Shaughnessey, director Mahayana Landowne, Arthur French and Rashmi. Credit: Dorothy Fennell

What do feisty soapbox orators, anti-lynching activists, bluestocking suffragists, labor agitators and birth control advocates have in common? Union Square. That was where, in the era of the 1911 Triangle shirtwaist factory fire, people with a cause gathered to add their voices to the public debate over the big political issues of the day. For two weeks in May, you can hear them again in a new production of Women's Voices from Union Square, an original musical play. Performances begin May Day (May 1) at the Tenement Museum Theater on Orchard Street in Lower Manhattan and continue there and at other venues in New York City through Mother's Day (May 12).

This musical journey into the past begins when an assortment of once-celebrated, but now largely forgotten, women activists climb out of the dustbin of history into present-day Union Square. At the center of the play is Rose Schneiderman, a Polish-Jewish garment worker and organizer. She and other early 20th century labor activists, among them Mary Dreier and Leonora O'Reilly, time travel forward under the influence of Clio, the mythological muse of history. They discover that while much has changed for the better for women in the work force, many of the problems they confronted nearly a century ago have yet to be resolved. Past grievances find new targets as the women tackle some unfinished business.

The history in Women's Voices is told in drama and song using words from the letters and speeches of the activists, who were Union Square regulars. Other characters are based on historical figures Mary Talbert, an African-American activist and suffragist; Margaret Sanger, a founder of the birth control movement; and W.E.B. DuBois, civil rights leader and public intellectual. The story comes from their very real, often heroic, efforts to organize women working in New York's sweatshops, to secure factory safety legislation, to win the vote, to gain access to birth control and to join forces with African-American women activists in the NAACP, who were campaigning for a federal anti-lynching law. These causes took them over and over again to Union Square, where they defined the terms of the debate about women's rights and roles.

After the performance, the audience is invited to discuss this rich tradition of women's activism with us and with members of the cast, who will respond to questions while remaining in character. The goal of these "performance workshops" is to share this often-neglected history with a wide and diverse audience and to continue the civic dialogue begun in Union Square so many generations ago.

Women's Voices features original music and lyrics and a set that incorporates a multi-media program of historical photographs and images of Union Square and its dissidents that we collected from archives across the country. Volunteers from UNITE Local 23-25 stitched replicas of historical banners for the set and costumes for the actors. The cast of five includes Arthur French, an OBIE Award-winning actor, and Rashmi, who recently was nominated for an Audelco award. All the actors and the stage manager are members of Actors' Equity.

Women's Voices is the second of four short musical plays in the Union Square series, two still in development, that tell the history of labor activism centered on Union Square over several generations. It will be performed at the Tenement Theater, 97 Orchard Street, May 1-4, and at the New York Historical Society, 2 West 77th Street, May 5, at 2 p.m. Following the May 5 performance, members of the audience will be asked to recount their stories about going to Union Square to participate in political rallies and labor parades. During the week of May 6, the show will be performed three times at the Center for Worker Education before returning to the Tenement Theater. For details or to make contributions to the Union Square Series of performance workshops, contact Jill Kubit at (212) 340-2809.