Mary Lyon to Rise from the Dead!

Yes, Mary Lyon comes back to life--and gives today's College a piece of her mind-- in a dramatic work-in-progress to be presented on Founder's Day. It will be performed around our founder's grave site at 3 pm on November 10. In Mary Is Back for Twentieth-Century Tea and She Is Pissed! Lyon and two of her (real-life) students, Fedelia Fiske and Hortense Carter, return to campus to protest the possibility that MHC might go coed.

Elizabeth Standal '97 researched the lives of Lyon, Fiske (an early Lyon protégé) and Carter (MHC's first African American graduate) in the College archives; then Cheryl Gittens FP '99 used archival materials to write a script using elements of nineteenth- and twentieth-century language. She is codirecting the piece with Alicia Brody '97 as part of Theatre Arts 310, taught by Holger Teschke, visiting artist in theatre arts.

Gittens says her script is merely a framework, and that large portions of the performance will develop collaboratively during rehearsals. More specifically, a dozen women were asked to think about their own reactions to the idea of coeducation, and their comments will become part of the dialogue. Gittens hopes the result, which she calls "more of a happening than a play," will give audiences "the feeling that Mary's here among us today," and that "when they look at the grave, they'll see it with a different vision."