Spent many years waiting for the right play of mine to head to the Fringe again. Loved the experience in 2010 and plan to love it all over again with this show. But it’s a very different sort of show than Case 22. Very different.
I’m a playwright and Director, but I started life as an historian. And whenever I’ve run across stories no one knows but ought to, I have no choice but to write about them – articles, documentaries… a play.
Could you walk away from Virginia’s first female editors? Three well-educated, independent thinkers who decided to write a pro-Union newspaper out of the heart of the Confederacy? Sounds like fiction, but it’s just a true story no one’s ever heard.
Sisters Lida and Lizzie Dutton and their friend Sarah Steer dealt with skirmishes and battles, foragers and a burning raid in their Quaker town of Waterford, Virginia. Put most of it in eight volumes of The Waterford News, along with sarcastic editorials on the incompetence of Union generals and a town joke column. Extraordinary courage, sharp wit and iron wills. They hoped Union soldiers would enjoy it and come to the town more often. They knew Confederates would punish them for the work.
I wrote the play years ago. First format was very traditional. I’ve changed it over the years, but it never felt completely right (Do they ever?). So when the Capital Fringe Festival application rolled around, it seemed a perfect excuse. Tighten it up and make room for a couple stories I hadn’t told before… and here we are.
Most of the characters are based on real people – some of their lines and many of the incidents and relationships taken straight from historic documents. The play begins with August 27, 1862 just after the battle at the Waterford Baptist Meeting House. The Dutton sisters take in a wounded Union solder, and discuss the two brothers, William and Charles Snoots (Can’t make those up), who fought on opposite sides that morning. When Union brother Charles surrendered, William came at him with a pistol yelling he had a right to kill the prisoner. But his Commander stopped him. The brothers’ war had begun.
My play includes the true story of Union Private Oliver Wilcox Norton, too. Oliver asked a slave woman who lived on Leesburg Pike what life was like for her in Loudoun County, VA, and she told him … in detail. Oliver wrote home about the interview – the only known personal account of its kind.
And the lives of Waterford News editors, Lida, Lizzie and Sarah are extraordinary in their own right. For example, Sarah Steer, a teacher, opened the first school for former slaves in Loudoun County – Second Street School in Waterford. The school still stands, used for living history and historical programs.
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And then there’s Lida, who one day met a Confederate Cavalryman who needed directions. Not wanting to help a Reb get where he was going quickly, she gave him directions only a local could understand. Then he asked her what side she’d like for him to be on, and she flat out told him she would hate him if he were a Rebel but would love him if he were a Northerner. He introduced himself as Lieutenant John William Hutchinson, a Union scout, who wore his jacket inside out to show the lining so he’d be taken for a Confederate. Then William told her he’d hold her to her promise. (Wish to heaven I could have come up with that one…)
As a playwright handling actual history, I believe my job is to take the truth and build a compelling story arc around it using fictional characters and situations – create moments that underscore the choices real people made.
What I hope the audience experiences? The shock of learning these people existed – three women in 1863 who thought for themselves and used humor and wit to survive. I also hope they see it’s pointless to paint one side of the conflict evil and one side good. No one believes that, and why should they? Why not find out why people did what they did. Much more interesting to present the truth and explore those choices.
And if I’ve done a really good job, the audience will put themselves in their boots and brogans for a while and wonder if they would have done the same… and maybe even think about why.
Meredith Bean McMath is Managing Director of Run Rabbit Run Productions, Inc in Loudoun County, Virginia. She is an award-winning historian and critically acclaimed playwright and Director. Her works include original plays and adaptations, documentaries, the books for musical adaptations, and the concept and libretto for NORTON: A Civil War Opera with Composer David E. Chavez. McMath’s historical productions have been commissioned by museums and history foundations which include The National Museum of American History, The Newseum, and The Waterford Foundation. More information: RRRtheatre.org and MeredithBeanMcMath.com
