“An Afternoon with Beatrix Potter" at the Davenport Public Library Fairmount Branch -- March 28.
Saturday, March 28, 3 p.m.
Davenport Public Library Fairmount Branch, 3000 North Fairmount Street, Davenport IA
With the hour-long event held in celebration of the current Women's History Month, busy touring performer Debra Ann Miller brings her one-woman show An Afternoon with Beatrix Potter to the Davenport Public Library's Fairmount Branch on March 28, inviting library patrons an intimate audience with the author of the treasured Peter Rabbit books as she shares stories of her incredible writing career and numerous other pursuits.
Born Helen Beatrix Potter on July 28, 1866, Beatrix Potter is one of history's most beloved children's authors and illustrators, her attention to detail and skill reaching far beyond Peter Rabbit and his friends. She produced and copyrighted stuffed toys, developed board games, coloring pages, and wallpaper, and her drawings of fungi are still used in instruction and identification texts. A generous supporter of the National Trust, Potter helped to preserve the landscape and culture of the Lake District, and raised award-winning Herdwick sheep. Like her beloved Peter Rabbit, she was devoted to her parents, but had a mind of her own. She also did not hesitate to squeeze under and around the barriers to keep women out of the worlds of work and science, and got into her fair share of scrapes with "Gentlemen Gardeners."
Mary Lincoln portrayer Debra Ann Miller is a professional actor, vocalist, and voice-over talent with more than 30 years of experience as a performer for live audiences, television, and film. Miller has balanced her career between commercial and educational theatre since graduating from Michigan State University’s Department of Theater in 1985. She toured the country with such prestigious children's theater companies as Artreach, now the Children's Theater of Cincinnati, and Child's Play Touring Theatre. Since 1997, Miller has traveled the country with Michael Krebs of With Lincoln Production as one of our nation’s more controversial First Ladies, Mary Todd Lincoln in Visiting the Lincolns; accompanying him to such places as the University of West Virginia, the Gerald R. Ford and Abraham Lincoln Memorial Library and Museums, and the Capitol Building in Washington, D.C.
In 2010, Miller began creating her own company focused on writing and producing one-woman plays in which she portrays important historical figures such as authors Jane Austen, Mary Shelley, Louisa May Alcott, and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, as well as her one-woman Mrs. Lincoln’s Salon. Miller still works in Chicago theatres, having most recently starred in A Midwinter Mummers Tale, and In the Observarium for Terra Mysterium Theatre, Flanagan's Wake at the Noble Fool Theater, and as Rose Kennedy in Chicago Dramatist's production of Rosemary at the Tony Award-winning Victory Gardens Theatre. Miller won Best Actress in the 2004 Chicago Indiefest for her performance in her first film, Zen Noir.
An Afternoon with Beatrix Potter will be performed in the Brooke/SCRA Rooms of the Davenport Public Library's Fairmount Street Branch at 3 p.m. on March 28, and earlier that day at 11 a.m., Debra Ann Miller will portray First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln in a one-woman program at the Rock Island Public Library Watts-Midtown Branch. Participation in both programs is free, and for more information on An Afternoon with Beatrix Potter, call (563)326-7832 and visit DavenportLibrary.com.
