Portland Stage Presents The First Full Reading Of PERSEVERANCE

Portland Stage presents the first full reading of Perseverance, by Callie Kimball, commissioned by Portland Stage and the Maine Suffrage Centennial Collaborative.

Perseverance Turner, an African-American schoolteacher, writer, and suffragist, is determined to elevate her students above the circumstances in which they were born. One hundred years later, in the same small town of Hillcroft, Maine, Dawn Davis, a white schoolteacher, is running for office on a platform of education reform. As the two women's stories intertwine, and ownership of history takes center stage. The setting takes place during August through October in the years 1920 and 2020, in a cellar and the kitchen in a forgotten municipal building in the fictional rural town of Hillcroft, Maine, as well as the front door of a museum.

Perseverance illuminates the complexities at the heart of the suffrage movement and highlights the contributions of African-American women who were sidelined by white suffragists while following the parallel stories of Perseverance "Percy" Turner, a Black suffragist and teacher in 1920, and Dawn Davis, a white woman running for office in 2020. By juxtaposing past and present, Kimball reveals both the bravery and the profound divisions that shape the course of social movements across the ages.

Perseverance fills a notable gap in the American theater canon: there are currently no significant theatrical works on women's suffrage, and certainly none that approach the movement from an intersectional perspective. Anita Stewart, Executive and Artistic Director of Portland Stage explains, "Kimball's play has the potential to greatly enrich the field of theater and America's cultural heritage."

Monday, November 4, at 7 PM
$10 in Advance, $15 at the Door
AT THE DOOR: 25A Forest Avenue, Portland, Maine
BOX OFFICE PHONE: 207.774.0465
ONLINE: portlandstage.org