Michele LaRue presents “Gettysburg:  One Woman’s War”

Synopsis

Gettysburg: One Woman's War is a one-woman performance embodying three stories from famed Pennsylvania author Elsie Singmaster’s collection Gettysburg: Stories of the Red Harvest and the Aftermath. In Singmaster’s powerful and specific exploration of a Civil War icon’s physical and emotional terrain, fictional townswoman Mary Bowman lives the war and its legacy—from the first shots at Willoughby Run to the consolation of Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, to the country’s healing a half century on. Published in 1913, on the eve of another fateful cataclysm : World War I.

Author Elsie Singmaster (1878 – 1958) lived most of her adult life on the campus of Gettysburg’s Lutheran Seminary, where her father was a professor—and where, just a few decades earlier, Confederate soldiers had fatefully charged a Yankee defense. She is credited with having written 350 short stories—most published in popular American literary journals and magazines—and 42 books. Several of these center on the Civil War.

Bios

Professional actress Michèle LaRue has toured nationally for 24 years in her repertoire of Tales Well Told: stories by America’s Gilded Age and Progressive Era writers. She has performed Gettysburg: One Woman's War nearly 50 times, in Gettysburg itself and in eight states from DE to WA. A Chicago native, Michèle majored in Acting at University of Kansas, then relocated to the East Coast of her ancestors. Her theatre credits range from Off-Broadway to several Pennsylvania stages. As a writer and editor Michèle has collaborated on numerous theatre books. Of her forebears, at least one Union fighter was from PA.