HMTC is preparing for a play production in March about the American novelist Louisa May Alcott (1831-1888). Her most popular book even today is Little Women. What people do not know is her life. Pamela Sterling beautifully depicts this author on stage with her script. We are fortunate to have her travel to Hanford to bring Louis May Alcott to life on stage from March 10-13.
Louisa May Alcott was born on November 29, 1832. She grew up with three sisters. She worked as a Civil War nurse, fought against slavery, and registered women to vote. Her parents were politically active and untraditional for that time. Her father had a different type of teaching and school. He educated his girls.
In 1843, the Alcott’s moved to a commune in Harvard, Massachusetts. They only wore linen, as ”it wasn’t tainted by enslaved labor the way cotton was.” Based on her father’s ideas, they did not use animal labor to farm the land and took cold baths.
In 1845, the Alcott family moved to Concord, Massachusetts. This was a hot bed of intellectuals, and her father earned a little by lecturing. Here Louisa was exposed to authors and intellectuals of that time.
In 1851, Louisa attracted literary attention by the poem Sunlight and the short story The Rival Painters. This can be marked as the beginning of her literary career.
Louisa ran schools and tutored from 1853 to 1857. In New Hampshire, during the summers, she directed play productions of the Walpole Amateur Dramatic Company. She wrote plays and acted.
In 1862, Louisa wanted to contribute to the anti-enslavement cause and signed to work as a nurse for the Union Army. She contracted typhoid fever. Her poor health forced her to return to Boston.
In May 1868, Alcott’s publisher asked Alcott to write a “girls’ story. She wrote Little Women which was published in September 1868, and sold out within two weeks.
In 1882 her father suffered a stroke and became paralyzed. Louisa cared for him. On March 1, 1888, she caught a cold. By March 3, it had developed into spinal meningitis. On March 4, her father died, and on March 6, she died from her illness.
Tickets for Louisa’s story on stage, which goes beyond the itinerary above, is available at HMTC.TicketLeap.com
