“'What Was in the Water in Davenport?': The Story of Three Davenport Writers" at the Davenport Public Library's Main Branch -- February 25.
Saturday, February 25, 1:30 p.m.
Davenport Public Library Main Branch, 321 Main Street, Davenport IA
With her insightful program dedicated to local talents who became members of the Provincetown Players – the little theatre group whose members included Nobel Laureate Eugene O'Neill – renowned author Marcia Noe will present "What Was in the Water in Davenport?": The Story of Three Davenport Writers at the Davenport Public Library's Main Branch, the February 26 event focusing on the gifts and accomplishments of Floyd Dell, George Cram Cook, and Pulitzer Prize winner Susan Glaspell.
Not long after the start of the 20th century, the philosophical and political orientations of these writers, fostered in their Midwestern hometown, resulted in a theatre practice marked by experimentalism, collaboration, leftist cultural critique, rebellion, liberation, and community engagement. The Davenport Library's February 25 presentation situates the origin of the Provincetown aesthetic in Davenport, where a large German population provided a particularly rich cultural matrix. What Was in the Water? will also explore how other elements in Davenport were conducive to literary and intellectual achievement, among them Socialism, trade unionism, and feminism.
Dell and Cook were active in a Socialist local and ran for office in Davenport as Socialists. In addition to their political activities, Dell's work as reporter and editor for The Tri-City Workers Magazine, Dell's and Cook's leadership of and Glaspell's membership in the Monist Society, and Cook and Glaspell's role in the Davenport censorship controversy were reflected in the plays that they wrote for the Provincetown Players. All three writers were able to see that radical politics sometimes begets radical chic; consequently, several of their plays satirize the faddish elements of the progressive political, social, and cultural movements in which they were active. Although the Provincetown Players was located on the East Coast, several of Dell's, Cook's, and Glaspell's plays were set in Davenport and its environs, a tribute to the lasting influence of the city's cultural milieu on these authors.
Program presenter Marcia Noe teaches courses in American literature and women's studies at The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, and is the author of Three Midwestern Playwrights: How Floyd Dell, George Cram Cook, and Susan Glaspell Transformed American Theatre, Susan Glaspell: Voice from the Heartland, and more than 20 additional publications on Pulitzer Prize winner Glaspell. In 1993, Noe was Fulbright Senior Lecturer-Researcher at the Federal University of Minas Gerais in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, and she is a senior editor of The Dictionary of Midwestern Literature, an editor of the journal MidAmerica, and the chair of the editorial committee of the Society for the Study of Midwestern Literature, which gave her the MidAmerica Award for distinguished contributions in 2003. The following year, she won the UTC College of Arts and Sciences Outstanding Teacher award and was an elected member of UTC's Council of Scholars and Alpha Society. Noe also recently completed a term on the board of Girls Inc. of Chattanooga, and currently sits on the boards of the League of Women Voters of Chattanooga and The Society for the Study of Midwestern Literature.
"What Was in the Water in Davenport?": The Story of Three Davenport Writers will be presented at the Davenport Public Library's Main Branch on February 25, participation in the 1:30 p.m. program is free, and more information is available by calling (563)326-7832 and visiting DavenportLibrary.com.
