Dramaturg Note
The year is 1868. The United States of America is emerging from the aftermath of the American Civil War. President Abraham Lincoln had been assassinated only three years earlier. Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton are on the cusp of forming the National Women’s Suffrage Association. Louisa May Alcott, a former nurse, maid, and governess, has just written her second novel to be published, Little Women. Because of Little Women’s popularity, Alcott would become, arguably, the first American author to make a living for herself based solely on the success of a writing career.
Louisa May Alcott based Little Women heavily on her own life. Alcott even set the novel in her childhood home, in the town in which she grew up. The characters of the four March sisters in Little Women were inspired by Alcott herself and her own three sisters. The characters of the sisters’ family members and love interests were also inspired by Alcott’s parents and her sisters’ suitors.
Set in 1866, Alcott’s Little Women painted a picture of small-town Concord, MA and characters full of life and imagination in two different volumes. Book-writer Allan Knee, lyricist Mindi Dickstein and composer Jason Howland set out to adapt Alcott’s novel for the stage in mid-2000. In early 2001, Little Women was workshopped as a musical, eventually making its Broadway debut in 2005. That same year, Sutton Foster won a Tony Award for her portrayal of the character that Louisa May Alcott wrote to reflect herself, Josephine (“Jo”) March. Despite its short run on Broadway, Little Women: The Musical launched a U.S. Tour, also in 2005, and has been adapted multiple times for the screen.
Little Women is as rich in its own history as the town in which it is set. Today, Concord, MA is famous for being the ‘birthplace’ of Little Women, the inventors of Welch’s Grape Juice, and home to author Nathaniel Hawthorn’s former residence. Hawthorne and Alcott both lived in Concord’s historical Wayside House at one time; Wayside House also housed Harvard College during the Revolutionary War. Alcott’s views on early feminism, women’s suffrage, and the world of publishing in the 1860’s can all be seen in Little Women: The Musical.
Enjoy!
