November 12th is Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s birthday. And in 2015 she will be 200 years old. At the same time, there’s a proposed Stanton/Anthony statue project in the works for Central Park in New York City. Perfect to announce the Stanton Bicentennial National Tour with pioneer feminist historian/activist/performer Sally Roesch Wagner. The program is called “Sowing Winter Wheat” based on Stanton’s quote: “We are sowing winter wheat, which the coming spring will see sprout, and other hands than ours will reap and enjoy.” Hear Stanton’s words about a woman’s right to control her own body; social and economic justice; natural childbirth and children’s rights; divorce reform; women’s equal legal rights, including the right to vote; the abolition of capital punishment; and the removal of “offending passages” from the Bible. This is a great program for suffrage centennials and special events in 2015, as well as the 2020 votes for women centennial.
Sally Roesch Wagner presents a 35-minute monologue as Stanton, followed by audience interaction with the 19th-century feminist’s bold wit and brilliant logic and she concludes with a conversation with the “scholar beneath the wig.” Wagner says: “Having performed as Elizabeth Cady Stanton for 26 years, I have grown old with her. I am drawing on my 40 years of Stanton research to offer a celebratory gift – the seasoned Stanton at her witty, brilliant, and iconoclastic best.” Sally Roesch Wagner, Ph.D., is the founding director of the Matilda Joslyn Gage Foundation in Fayetteville, NY. She’s an adjunct faculty member at Syracuse University. For information, call 540.533.0733.