Tea, True Womanhood, and Uppity Washington Women - 2008-2009
Tea parties! That's where many women started thinking about their lives, their own freedom, and other radical notions. Women launched the first Women's Rights Convention in Seneca Falls, New York - over tea. Through stories, journals, songs, and humor, Susan Butruille explores the dynamics designed to keep women in their places, and tells of women who defied convention and turned toward freedom. Hear stories of Washington and other western women, both uppity and refined, who explored a wider world for themselves and for their sisters. Meet Mother Joseph, one of the Northwest's first architects; Mourning Dove of the Okanogan tribe, perhaps the first American Indian woman novelist; the women of Maryhill Museum; suffragists; and Calamity Jane, who shares her recipe for "Twenty Year Cake." Learn, enjoy, listen . . . and you may recognize echoes of your own life and times. Tea, anyone?

Recipe for Justice - 2008-2009
Celebrate the Washington Suffrage Centennial with the playwright of the new readers theatre production Recipe For Justice. Narrative, recipes, suffrage songs, and audience participation enliven Susan Butruille's interpretation of the poignant and spirited tale of Washington woman suffrage. Washington women became fifth in the nation to win permanent voting rights, inspiring the final drive for national woman suffrage in 1920. You'll hear voices of "Recipe For Justice's" main characters, along with such suffragists as Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony; Washington's Emma Smith DeVoe and May Arkwright Hutton; newspaper publisher Abigail Scott Duniway; the militant Alice Paul; and Inez Milholland, who died for the cause. Susan Butruille's telling of the suffrage story is both entertaining and educational - a fitting way to mark the Washington Suffrage Centennial. "I had no idea I would learn so much - and have so much fun!" - audience member from the premiere production of "Recipe For Justice."

Abigail Scott Duniway in Washington - 2006-2008
With poignancy, humor, and an occasional song, Butruille portrays Abigail Scott Duniway, the Northwest's leading suffragist and human rights newspaper publisher. An 1852 Oregon Trail emigrant, she helped win voting rights for Washington women --  twice -- and accompanied the great Susan B. Anthony on a speaking tour of the state she once considered a "Canada for women."  Abigail Scott Duniway's lectures, writing, and women's rights organizing gained her notoriety from coast to coast. Along the way, she confronted prejudice, prohibitionists, preachers, national suffrage leaders, the liquor industry, her own temper, and her own brother.  Susan Butruille vividly conveys the grit of one woman with a mission, caught up in the passions and prejudices of her times. Abigail Scott Duniway's story reminds us that today's questions of women's and men's roles in society, along with religious and political divides, have a long and colorful history.

Tea, True Womanhood, and Uppity Women - 2006-2008