7-ON PLAYWRIGHTS: MRS PRESIDENT: THE OPERA

Wednesday, 26 October 2016

MRS PRESIDENT: THE OPERA

150 years before Hillary, there was Victoria...

Love new opera but can't get to New York's National Opera Center this Friday? No problem: Mrs President will be live-streamed and you can find out all about Victoria Woodhull, who made a bid for the presidency in 1872, decades before women were given the vote.

Woodhull not only ran for president (choosing the African-American Frederick Douglass as her running-mate) at a time when Trump's attitude towards women was the norm, she was also a Spiritualist, a Wall Street banker, the founder of a women's journal, and a proud 'free lover'. Mrs President traces her beginnings as a child psychic on the carnival circuit to national notoriety, her sex-scandal involving preacher and abolitionist Henry Ward Beecher, and her legacy.

Read more about the opera.

Composer: Victoria BondLibrettist: Hilary Bell

Upcoming performance: Friday October 28, 8 pm

National Opera Center
330 7th Avenue, New York City

LIVE-STREAMED WORLDWIDE

It is unprecedented: A woman running for President of the United States. Her detractors call her "Mrs. Satan", and claim she belongs in jail. It is 1872, and Victoria Woodhull is the first woman to make a bid for the White House. Her story is the inspiration for Victoria Bond's opera, Mrs President.

Cast

The cast features the soprano Valerie Bernhardt as Victoria Woodhull and the tenor Scott Ramsay as Henry Ward Beecher, the high-powered preacher who is determined to destroy Woodhull. The cast also includes Katrina Thurman, Joy Hermalyn, Robert Osborne and Scott Joiner, with Naomi Lewin as narrator, pianist Daniela Candillari. Victoria Bond conducts. Tickets are $20 at the door.

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About 7-ON

7-ON Playwrights was established in 2005 by Donna Abela, Catherine Zimdahl, Ned Manning, Noëlle Janaczewska, Vanessa Bates, Verity Laughton and Hilary Bell. Seven minds that don’t think alike but are simpatico in this—our belief in the transformative properties of our artform and its place in Australian culture. With over 200 plays between us, our work has been produced on stages across Australia. Internationally, we have been produced in Botswana, the US, the UK, the Czech Republic, Sweden, Hong Kong, Ireland, New Zealand, Germany, Denmark, France, Canada, Vietnam, Korea and Japan. We have over 40 awards between us including: 14 Australian Writers’ Guild Awards, 4 Griffin Playwriting Awards, 3 Premiers’ Literary Awards, 4 Inscription Awards, an Adelaide Critics’ Circle Prize, a Phillip Parsons Young Playwright’s Award, a Wyndham Campbell Prize, a Centenary Medal, a Patrick White Playwrights’ Fellowship, and a Human Rights Award for Drama. As 7-ON we advocate for playwrights, initiate performance and publishing projects, and support and celebrate each other’s work. We create projects that are best served by a multitude of voices. These have included The Seven Needs (Griffin, 2007), Thus Spake Zarathustra (Wollongong University, 2008), Long Shadows (STC workshop, 2009), Platonic (Hothouse development, 2013), We Are The Ghosts Of The Future (Rocks Discovery Museum, 2015), and various works under the banner of Old Texts Revisited (ABC Radio, 2009), I Contain Multitudes (Novemberism Playwriting Festival, 2011) and No Nudity, Weapons or Naked Flames (MayDay! Playwrights’ Festival, 2013) which presented a selection of monologues from our anthology of the same name published by the Federation Press in 2012. We are also included in Currency Press’ anthology of short plays Short Circuit (2009).