Postponed – Someone Must Wash the Dishes: An Anti-Suffrage Satire

We’ll reschedule this program for later in the year.

Many women fought against getting the vote, but none with more charm, prettier clothes—and less logic—than the fictional speaker in Someone Must Wash the Dishes: An Anti-Suffrage Satire. “Woman suffrage is the reform against nature,” proclaims our unlikely, but irresistibly likeable, heroine. “Ladies, get what you want. Make a scene. Make home a hell on earth—but do it in a womanly way! That is so much more dignified and refined than walking up to a ballot box and dropping in a piece of paper!”

Cheerfully single-minded, our guest performer and speaker Michele LaRue contradicts every point she makes as she crusades to preserve the Home and save the Nation from anarchy.  Written in 1912, by pro-suffragist Marie Jenney Howe, Someone Must Wash the Dishes is fully costumed staged performance.  Following the performance, the actress will give a short talk about the Antis and their arguments in the context of their time, and summarize Howe’s career as a minister and a Progressive catalyst.

LaRue is a transplanted Midwesterner: raised in Illinois and Iowa, she makes her home in New Jersey—just across the Hudson from Broadway, NYC. With a degree in acting from the University of Kansas, her earliest East Coast roles included Julia in The Philanderer, at the University’s Theatre Intime; Viola in Twelfth Night, at Bucks County Playhouse; and one-fourth of a touring musical revue—Jerz—in which she shared the spotlight with a hyperkinetic young comedian named Joe Lane . . . later called “Nathan.” In addition to “making the rounds” in New York City, Michèle freelanced in graphic design and/or promotional writing and soon began writing for Back Stage: The Performer’s Weekly, and managing the studio of famed scenic designer Eldon Elder.  Directed by Kliewer, Michèle debuted the popular Someone Must Wash the Dishes: An Anti-Suffrage Satire for the East Lynne Company. Michèle tours nationally with her one-woman performances. Michèle’s favorite recent New York City roles are Agatha, in Jennifer Camp’s quirky comedy Key West ; Irene, the feisty bag lady in Michael Bruck’s Encounters in Passaic ; and Katherine, in Robert Anderson’s poignant Silent Night, Lonely Night . In New Jersey, she costarred in Kathleen Clark’s Southern Comforts at the Bickford Theatre, created the role of agoraphobic Inga in Centenary Stage Company’s world premiere of Poetry of Pizza, and is an active member of New Jersey Repertory Company. She is also a member of both actors’ unions—Actors’ Equity Association and SAGAFTRA—and, as a theatre editor-writer, of Drama Desk, an organization of New York drama critics.