In-person or not, the show will go on — on June 26 starting at 7 p.m., Silverthorne Theater Company will present a virtual live performance of comedy with “An Evening with Ruth Draper” via the LAVA Center in Greenfield.
An inspired social satirist of the 1920s and beyond, Ruth Draper captivated audiences around the world with her one-woman monologues, often poking fun at the foibles of the bon vivant. Draper created whole casts of characters who would join her on stage, yet only in her — and the audience’s — imagination.
Actor Penney Hulten, of Northfield, will inhabit the world of Draper in two of her most delightful comedic monologues, “The Italian Lesson” and “Doctors and Diets.” The virtual fundraiser for the Greenfield-based Silverthorne Theater was an inspiration by Hulten, a 2009 graduate of the Ada Comstock Program at Smith College in Northampton where she earned her bachelor’s degree in theater. Coincidentally, Ruth Draper earned an honorary degree of doctor of humanities at Smith College in 1947.
A native of the San Francisco Bay Area, Hulten has been involved with Silverthorne Theater since 2017 in myriad capacities including gala planning, admin support, and even modeling for a recent costume fashion show. Her most enjoyable assignment, she says, was assisting backstage with quick costume changes for “GREATER TUNA” in 2018.
“They say drama is easy and comedy is hard,” says Hulten. “For me, it is the other way around. I’m always at my happiest when I can make people laugh. During the Great Depression, filmmakers such as Busby Berkeley created films to bring spectacle and distraction from everyday life to audiences suffering from the aftershocks of the stock market crash. I hope to bring some comic relief to those of us struggling with the current pandemic and other concerns.”
Hulten’s early influences include Lucille Ball, Barbra Streisand, Carol Burnett, Katherine Hepburn and Gilda Radner. “I learned from these women that it was alright to be an attractive, independent, intelligent woman and yet do comedy that pokes fun at oneself. As a matter of fact, I found them more appealing for having done so. To be able to laugh at ourselves — and the human condition— is a gift to others, letting them know it’s okay to be our own totally human selves: flawed, silly, hypocritical, klutzy, fearful, hilarious — all of it.”
Draper had her own sense of the absurd, yet never made fun with her characters. “Everybody is rather ridiculous, rather pitiful,” she said. Yet there isn’t any malice or acerbity in her portrayals. She is sympathetic to people while at the same time sublimely pointing out their inherent shortcomings. Audiences can see themselves — their neighbors, family members — in her characters. Draper’s alternating comedy and pathos in her tales evokes a knowing solace and understanding that comforts as well as entertains.
An internationally acclaimed diseuse (a woman who is a skilled and usually professional reciter), Ruth Draper was born in 1884 in New York City. She began displaying her talents early, delighting her siblings by imitating the adults in their lives. Later, she began giving monologues at private parties and schools. In 1920, she made her professional debut at London’s Aeolian Hall. Her skits, as she called them, and her proclivities expanded as she extended her cast of characters.
Creating her own original material while keeping it all in her head, she entertained audiences around the country and around the world; most notably to King George V and Queen Mary of Britain, as well as the royal families of Spain and Belgium. World renowned artist John Singer Sargent created charcoal portraits of her, and she was a favorite among actors such as Katherine Hepburn, Helen Hays, Sarah Burnhardt and Laurence Olivier. Shunning interviews, she disliked publicity yet filled theaters for runs on Broadway, in the West End and the like. Draper continued acting into her 70s and died in her sleep after a performance in 1956 during the run of a Broadway engagement.
Henry James was a friend of the family, and Draper asked him if she should pursue a career as a professional actress. He said to her, “No, my dear child. You have woven your own beautiful little Persian carpet. Stand on it.”
Draper brought humor and magic to her patrons, and Hulten hopes to bring some of that same enchantment to local audiences via Facebook Live. Hulten says, “Laughter is the best medicine, so I invite you for a spoonful. Broadway character Auntie Mame said, ‘Life is a banquet and most poor suckers are starving to death.’ I say — come to the table and feast!.”
As well as the live broadcast, the evening’s performance will be filmed and available on the Silverthorne website: silverthornetheater.org. For more information about Silverthorne Theater or this performance, please call Lucinda Kidder at 413-768-7514 or email silverthornetheater@gmail.com.