The most dangerous woman in America was a little old lady, age 83, called so by a prosecuting attorney in 1913. Her name was Mother Mary Harris Jones. Her children were the working men, women and children of America and she was fighting for their right to organize into labor unions. In THE MOST DANGEROUS WOMAN IN AMERICA, written by northwest playwright David Christie, the battle is laid out between those workers of America and the giants of the Industrial Age, and the American Dream is set in motion. In this one-woman show,starring Therese Diekhans, you will meet characters as diverse as John D. Rockefeller, Jr., Louis Tikas, a Greek-American miner and martyr of the Ludlow massacre in Colorado, Dennis McKee, a 10 year old breaker boy in the coal mines of Pennsylvania and an Alabaman senator. The scene is early 20th century, but the struggle resonates today in the early part of the 21st. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
Posted in Uncategorized by L. Nicol Cabe – Jun 07, 2010
“The Most Dangerous Woman in America,” a show by Therese Diekhans, was a great solo show I got to see this past weekend….within the first 5 minutes her dedication to story-telling swept my imagination away. I know a solo show has been good if I remember much more scenery, many more characters, than there actually were in the story, and that is how I remember this one. My brain remembers the hills of West Virginia, the dark, smokey bar where Mother Jones preached her union sermon, the dusty northern mills where children desperately tried to avoid losing limbs for 12 hours a day. None of these locations appeared on stage, although characters were in them at various times. But I remember them clearly, as though I had watched a movie of this instead of a bare stage solo performance.
Also, Therese Diekhans is off to the fringe festival in LA with her show — break legs, Therese!"
