by Molly Newman and Barbara Damashek

Music and Lyrics by Barbara Damashek

Performed
June 12-16, 19-23, 2001
at
The Boal Barn Playhouse

Production Staff

Director	Elaine C. Meder
Music Director	Robert Roxby
Scenic Designer	Cary Ziegler
Lighting Designer	Amanda B. Huckabee
Costume Designer	Edna M. Immel
Technical Director	Zachary DeGeorge
Stage Manager	Sara Poorman
Apprentice Coordinator	Michael C. Rider

About the Show

In her essay “Who Else?” Karen Obrigewitch writes of life in “sagebrush country” where women-mothers, aunts, sisters, daughters, friends-face gruelling and grinding conditions, and she asks, “How can any female survive without close women friends? Whom does she call when she needs affirmation … when calves don’t bring enough cash to payoff the bank, or when her parents die? Who would cry with her?” That female bond lies at the core of Molly Newman and Barbara Damashek’s Quilters.

Quilters is the story of a pioneer woman and her six daughters, but it is also the story of all pioneer women, forming a rich mosaic of their lives and the life of the great prairie on which they lived. Despite blizzards, droughts, fires and twisters, these women quilt, each panel depicting the joys, beauties, rewards, and tragedies of their lives. Quilters is a celebration of frontier women from girlhood to marriage to childbirth-“I wouldn’t take a million dollars for any of my kids, but I wouldn’t give a nickel for another one”-to illness to death. Quilters is a female album of the lives of women who moved across the Rocky Road to Kansas, to Oklahoma, to Colorado, to California, “bound for Canaan’s Land,” and always “Quiltin’ and Dreamin’ a Dream / On Every Stitch.” At the end of the journey is the finished quilt, all the patches and pieces assembled into a glorious legacy, “Pieces of Lives / Swatches and Notions / All the Unspoken / Emotion / Devotion of Our Lives.”

Richard B. Gidez for SCCT

The Cast

Sarah McKendree Bonham	Sharon Faison
The Daughters	Jill Kristen Campbell Pauline Saylor Hain Debbie Meder Jodi Moore Karyn Schwartz Laura Stocker
Ensemble	Desiree Dennis Emily Dennis Deegan Faison Leah Mueller Samantha Mullen Kylene Shutes