SPECIAL THANKS
Jennifer Sampson, Rebecca Worley, Porter Jamison, BCT, Heather McCarthy, Bakersfield College, American Kids, Jim and Katie Riley, the artists in our gallery, The Empty Space board of directors, and our generous and supportive patrons.
DIRECTOR'S NOTES
Our curtain rises 150 years in the past to a time without the addiction of electronic devices to keep us entertained; a time when keeping up with distant friends or relatives meant we had to pick up a pen, dip it in ink, and write a letter; a time when we had to depend on journalists, newspapers, and novels to take us out of our rather small realities and give us a broader mindset. Tonight, you get a break from progress, a respite from all our modern marvels as we whisk you back to a quieter, more gentile era; a time when (hold on now) imagination was the thing!
Who better to take us back than Louisa May Alcott? Free-thinking and employed at a job she loved, Alcott was a woman ahead of her time and would have likely fit in well today. Already a published author, Alcott was encouraged by her editor to write a less lurid and daring style of novel than those she wrote under her nom de plume. For inspiration, she turned to her beloved family and childhood home. She finished Little Women in July 1868 after only three months of writing.
Little Women is a simple story, but is surprisingly profound. It embodies joy, loss, longing, stasis, inspiration and love. Each character has a change of heart that is necessary to become who they will be, and all embrace hard work, charity, temperance and self-reflection. When I look at the March sisters, I see more compassion, hard work, charity, temperance and self-reflection than we experience in the modern age. There is a great value in the attempt to adopt these virtues and to learn from these characters from the past. Little Women helped us develop the image of the All-American girl. Each of the sisters embody a particular tenacity and virtue that we value. Meg's nurturance and hard-working spirit, Amy's style and poise, Beth's kind heart and frailty, and (of course) Jo's pioneering soul and creative spark are all inseparable aspects of our conceptions.
Enjoy Little Women! We have worked hard, laughed much and have looked forward to you being here.
